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ISiberjSiDe €Ducat(onal jHonograpl^iS 

EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE 

THE EVOLUTION OF A 

DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL 

SYSTEM 

BY 

CHARLES HUBBARD JUDD 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION AND DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL OF 
EDUCATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 



COPYRIGHT, I91S, BY CHARLES HUBBARD JUDD 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



,r* 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



JUL 20 I ^ id y^- 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

It is probable that at the close of the great emer- 
gency in which we now find ourselves this nation 
will undergo a notable reappraisal and a consid- 
erable reconstruction. A nation seldom makes 
large sacrifices for the maintenance of its ideals 
without becoming sensitive to practices which 
fall far short of them. Already we are deeply con- 
cerned to know just what qualities of personal 
character and precisely what kinds of human re- 
lationships are fundamental to the reahzation of 
a truly democratic life. We are asking whether 
or not we possess these in adequate degree, and 
how we are to overcome our discrepancies. 

The American cannot long ask himself these 
questions without ultimately looking to the pub- 
lic school system for ways and means of rebuild- 
ing our national character and life. From the 
time of Thomas Jefferson it has been the habit of 
our national leaders to reassert the acute depend- 
ence of free government and free society upon 
ill 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

the organized system of popular education. Gen- 
erally speaking, the people as a whole have 
accepted the doctrine that our schools are the 
most effective instruments we have for the con- 
scious direction of our national life. It remains 
for the teachers to put this faith into practice 
more responsively and more scientifically than 
ever before. 

The professional problem is one of more direct 
and effective social adjustment of school organi- 
zation and teaching process to the ideals and con- 
ditions of our aspiring but somewhat chaotic 
American hfe. The philosophy of democracy 
needs an enlarged and more thoughtful use 
among school teachers. The traditional and the 
imitative tendencies of the teaching personnel 
must be supplemented by a newly acquired de- 
votion to the checking of results. Long has 
an easy faith in our deductions of expected ef- 
ficiency concealed our incompetencies in the 
achievement of both immediate pedagogical re- 
sults and final social products. Some progress 
we have made, but it is quite inadequate to meet 
just criticisms which at the end of this war will 
iv 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

fall heavily upon the American school system. 
The educators must at once begin to prepare 
their minds for that new effective democratic 
service which the public will soon insistently re- 
quire of them. 

The first step is to know whither our present 
school system is taking us. What we have is the 
product of much indiscriminate borrowing from 
alien nations coupled with partial modifications 
forced on us by imperious influences native to our 
own life. But even these characteristically Ameri- 
can influences have entered our school system in 
an isolated rather than a coordinated way. They 
operate in the presence of strange inconsistencies. 
Many factors in our national Hfe which have a 
wide but subtle importance in our social scheme 
have failed to register upon our educational or- 
ganization because public clamor has never im- 
posed them upon professional attention. 

The second step is to encourage an educational 
initiative and experimentation which will give 
to our American school teaching a more direct 
adaptiveness to our national social life. Amongst 
us, educational reform has operated with an air 
v 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

of cock-sureness. If a new device could not 
promise perfection, it has not had strong propo- 
nents. This has been fatal to that openness of 
mind which gives experiment the large initial 
breadth which increases its chance of success. 
Vanity, both personal and professional, has at- 
tached to the origination of new plans of proced- 
ure and prevented the correction of errors in first 
thought. Moreover, we have been wasteful in 
our neglect of educational experience elsewhere 
than on our own trying ground. Our need is for 
more frank experimentation in education, one 
that is sensitive to the judgments of a compara- 
tive study of experience the world over. 

The way to such a point of view and method 
is admirably suggested by the brilliant study of 
American education here presented. Its whole 
analysis is scientific in spirit and timely in method 
of statement. It ushers in the beginning of that 
new educational literature which the present 
large thoughtfulness of the profession must pro- 
vide if American schools are to meet the huge 
American problems already staring us in the 
face. 



PREFACE 

The changes which have been going on in recent 
years in the organization of American schools 
are not mere superficial readjustments dictated 
by the whims of communities or individual lead- 
ers. There are, to be sure, minor reforms and 
counter-reforms which are purely local or tran- 
sient in character. But back of these there are 
fundamental tendencies toward change which 
aim at the adaptation of schools to community 
needs. The feeling has been steadily gaining 
strength that our generation must shake off the 
institutional traditions of a past age and organ- 
ize a sound scheme of democratic education. The 
present study is an effort to bring out explicitly 
some of the justifications for the reorganizations 
which are now under way. The book aims to 
bring to clearer consciousness the unique charac- 
teristics of our continuous educational system. 
It aims to point the way by which much of the 
present waste of pupils' time and energy can be 
vii 



PREFACE 

corrected. It is a plea for a tolerant attitude 
toward the crudities of the junior high school. 
It is a plea for more cooperation in developing 
this institution. 

The book limits itself to a discussion of the 
common school and to the facts regarding the 
high school which are directly related to the 
common school. The problem of high-school 
reorganization and the problem of a better ar- 
ticulation of high school and college are touched 
on, but not discussed in full. The reader will, 
however, be able without serious recasting of 
phrases to carry over all that is here set forth 
into the fields which lie outside the sphere of the 
present volume. 

C. H. J. 

Chicago, Illinois 



CONTENTS 

Editor's Introduction iii 

Preface vii 

I. Introduction i 

II. Undemocratic Schools 6 

III. The Beginnings of the American System . 19 

IV. Unfortunate Borrowing 38 

V. The Struggle for an Undivided Educa- 
tional System 56 

VI. Pressure within the High School . .71 

VII. What is a Junior High School ... 83 

VIII. Individual Differences and Economy . 95 

IX. Practical Methods of Promoting Reform 108 

Outline 115 



THE EVOLUTION OF A 
DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

I 

INTRODUCTION 

The common school is sometimes described as a 
product of the Reformation. Before that period 
there was no thought of special training for 
ordinary boys and girls. The humble tasks of 
their daily lives called for no knowledge of the 
arts of reading and writing, and such skill as they 
required for practical occupations was acquired 
by imitation. There was no demand, even in 
the upper levels of society, for the education of 
girls. The duties of girls were domestic, and pro- 
priety forbade their training outside the home. 
It was only the sons of the aristocracy who were 
thought of as needing schooling. For them there 
were developed, from the twelfth century on, 
schools of law and theology and places of train- 
ing in the arts of war and the hunt. Education 
I 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

began as an exclusive right of the sons of the 
* aristocracy. 

By the time the Puritans came to New England 
matters had progressed. The common man had 
reached a level where he had a right to schooling. 
But the traditions of aristocracy were still strong 
even in New England. The clergyman and others 
of the professional class were men apart, and the 
schools which prepared them for their life-work 
were exclusive institutions. Even as late as 
Revolutionary times a democratic system of edu- 
cation had not been worked out. 

Then came the period of rapid growth of re- 
publican ideas when the Nation framed its Con- 
stitution and set up its machinery of popular 
government. Still there lingered in the schools 
traditions of aristocratic exclusiveness in the 
form of separate schools for the professional 
classes; and for a long time these traditions could 
not be set aside in the interests of democratic 
schools. 

The prospects of advance toward a strictly 
democratic educational system were bright as a 
result of the growth, in the early years of the 



INTRODUCTION 

nineteenth century, of the American academy 
and of the district school. But in the midst of 
this advance, in the middle of the last century 
our leaders carried us back toward medievalism 
by borrowing from the least democratic nation in 
Europe one of its fundamental institutions. They 
brought to America the Prussian common school. 
The eight-year elementary school of the United 
States is a transplanted institution. It does not 
belong to us, and it is not in harmony with our 
evolution. It has acted as an obstacle to the 
growth of a unified school system. 

For more than half a century we have tried to 
expand it and thus to make it democratic. But 
during all this time we have not succeeded in 
radically altering its form. Of late we have be- 
gun to understand that what is needed is thor- 
oughgoing reform, not compromise. During the 
last decade many cities have adopted a form of 
organization known as the six-and-six plan. This 
abandons the eight-year elementary school with 
its Prussian course of study for an organization 
which is at once more economical and broader 
in the outlook which it offers to its pupils. The 

3 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

experiment has been somewhat chaotic and 
many observers have been pessimistic. Some are 
in doubt about the wisdom of the experiment 
even to-day. But progress is under way and this 
progress is toward a school system which will 
eliminate the Prussian eight-year common school. 

In the midst of the hesitating experimentation 
of recent years have come the present awakening 
of a national consciousness and a new devotion to 
democracy stimulated by the revelations of the 
goal toward which Prussian education leads. The 
contribution which the schoolman can make to 
the new era is clear. He must bring about speed- 
ily those changes which have been waiting for 
slow evolution. He must study the new conditions 
of life, and create an educational system which 
shall be no imitation of an old aristocratic model, 
but a true expression of the spirit of a free democ- 
racy. 

To this end it is fitting that the distinction be- 
tween an aristocratic school system and a demo- 
cratic school system be carefully drawn. It is 
fitting that the history of American schools be 
sketched so as to show where these schools have 
4 



INTRODUCTION 

made achievements and where they have failed. 
With this contrast and with these facts in mind 
it will be legitimate to suggest the steps which 
must be taken to complete the reforms which 
have been moving but slowly in the past. 



II 

UNDEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS 

Americans have long been accustomed to hear- 
ing the public school lauded as the foundation of 
democracy. It is not unnatural that they should 
fall into the mistaken belief that any scheme of 
universal education is of necessity democratic. 
The example of Germany completely refutes this 
belief. The educational system of that country 
is and has been for generations a wall of defense 
to aristocracy and a device for disciplining the 
common people into willing subservience to this 
aristocracy. An examination of some of the lead- 
ing characteristics of the German schools will 
serve two purposes. It will furnish a contrasting 
background for a later discussion of the demo- 
cratic tendencies in our own system and will at 
the same time show how gross a blunder was 
made in the middle of the last century when one 
branch of the German system was imported into 
the United States. 

6 



UNDEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS 

The German school system is made up of two 
separate compartments. One is for the common 
people and is called the Volksschule. The other 
is for the aristocracy. The latter is subdivided 
into several institutions which differ sKghtly from 
each other, but for our purposes may very prop- 
erly be typified by the Gymnasium which is the old- 
est and still dominant form of aristocratic school. 

There are minor deviations from the types of 
organization which we shall discuss. The smaller 
German States have Volksschulen and Gymna- 
sien, which in their primary departments are not 
as completely separated as are the schools of the 
great States where there is absolute separation 
from the first year to the last. In some German 
States there are certain so-called middle schools 
which stand between the two extreme types. In 
all the States schools for girls have grown up in 
recent years which are somewhat divergent from 
the historic patterns planned originally for boys. 
But when all these minor and local differences 
are taken into account, the one clear outstanding 
fact is that the German schools fall into two 
sharply distinguished systems. 
7 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

The Volkssckule and the Gymnasium are alto- 
gether different in their methods of training 
teachers. The teachers of the Volkssckule are 
graduates of that school who have afterwards 
been trained in an institution known as a Lehrer^ 
seminar. This institution has no connection 
with the university. Before the war, teachers of 
the Volkssckule were allowed to take courses in 
the university only in the one State of Saxony, 
and the university privileges there reluctantly 
granted were so hedged about that the conces- 
sion was practically without value. Even in 
Saxony the teacher in training for the common 
school had absolutely no access to the univer- 
sity. In no other State were even experienced 
common-school teachers allowed to study in the 
higher institutions of learning. 

The teachers of the Gymnasium, on the other 
hand, have entirely different training. No Volks- 
schule graduate ever becomes a teacher in the 
Gymnasium. No Gymnasium teacher has ever 
been in a Lehrer seminar. The teachers in the 
Gymnasium are products of the higher schools. 
They are first of all graduates of the Gymnasium 
8 



UNDEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS 

itself. They then take courses in the university. 
After completing courses in the university the 
prospective teacher of the Gymnasium takes an 
examination set by the State, and if successful 
goes to a Gymnasium for a period of apprentice 
training. Here he is drilled for two years in the 
ways of the teaching staff and, under the clos- 
est supervision of the principal and teachers, ab- 
sorbs the ways of thinking and acting which will 
fit him to perpetuate the traditions of a school 
devoted to the educating of a highly selected 
aristocratic class. 

The sharp distinction between the methods 
of training teachers in the two schools of the 
German system is of importance to us in this 
country, because in 1838 Massachusetts, through 
the enactment of the Normal School Law, es- 
tablished the first American training school for 
teachers of the common schools on the model 
of the Prussian Lehrer seminar. The American 
normal school was in no way related to the col- 
lege; nor was it a part of the original purpose of 
this school to train teachers for the high school. 
The normal schools were institutions apart, sep- 

9 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

arate from all other schools except the common 
elementary schools. Trouble has again and 
again arisen from this fact. Our normal schools 
have alv/ays been difficult to coordinate with 
other educational institutions. We have to-day 
in many States acute controversies between 
state universities and normal schools because 
in a unified American system it is difficult to 
maintain the German separation. We shall some 
day have to face this problem and solve it. It 
is one of the misfortunes which came to us when 
we were young and unorganized and over-im- 
pressed with the apparent efficiency of a system 
that was well organized. 

Coming back from the digression, we note 
that the German schools are entirely separate, 
not only in their teachers, but also in the classes 
of pupils for which they are designed. It is not 
true there as here that all classes of pupils attend 
one elementary school in the early years and 
gradually fall apart later. From the first there 
is separation. At six years of age the boy or girl 
of the common family goes to the Volksschule. 
The child knows from the day he enters that 



UNDEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS 

school that his place in the economy of national 
life is fixed at a low level. He is to belong to the 
humbler class. His tasks are those of bearing the 
heavy burdens. He can never be one of society^s 
leaders. The six-year-old boy of the aristocratic 
family goes to another institution. He, too, 
notes the social distinction and is proud of the 
future which lies before the members of his class. 
If he can maintain his place in this school, all 
the opportunities of rank are open to him. 

Let us follow these two classes of pupils as 
they move through the schools. The child in 
the Volksschule receives eight years of educa- 
tion. This is given him out of the public purse. 
When the eight years are over he is confirmed 
in the Church and his education is in most cases 
completed. A few go on to the Lehrer seminar. 
The rest attend industrial schools which fit for 
the trades, but no boy or girl of this school can 
ever receive a higher education. There is no 
high school, no university, no intellectual open- 
ing for the graduates of the Volksschule. They 
are the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. 
The products of the Volksschule go into the in- 
II 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

dustries. They may not be officers in the army. 
They are not admitted to the civil-service posi- 
tions which require intelligence. They are held 
by the firm hand of the State in the social caste 
to which they belong. They are drafted into 
army service for two years, or in some divisions 
for three, as common soldiers; and they are 
taken to some part of the Empire remote from 
home in order that they may not be distracted 
during the period of their introduction to the 
art of soldiering. 

The student of the Gymnasium is of a very 
different rank and has a very different experi- 
ence. In the school which he attends all the 
pupils pay tuition. They have before them 
twelve years of schooling, three in the primary 
department and nine in the Gymnasium proper. 
After graduation from the Gymnasium there 
open up the university and the higher technical 
schools. Beyond these are the professions and 
all the higher Government positions. Those 
who complete successfully the third year from 
the last in the Gymnasium serve only one year 
in the army and are allowed to choose the place 

12 



UNDEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS 

where they will serve. It is from this class, too, 
that the officers of the army are drawn. 

So intense is the social pressure on a boy to 
maintain himself in this school that many of 
the difficulties which are common in keeping up 
standards among American high-school pupils 
are unknown. The word of a teacher in a Gym- 
nasium is heeded as if it were the dictum of 
society, because it is true in a very literal sense 
that the boy and the teacher are dealing with 
the social career of the boy and with no trivial 
problem of mere education. 

A most important phase of the separation 
between the Volksschule and the Gymnasium 
appears when we come to consider the subject- 
matter of instruction. The Gymnasium teaches 
Latin and French and English. It teaches alge- 
bra and geometry and science. Nor are these 
subjects postponed to the later years. At the 
end of the fourth year of schooling the boy be- 
gins his Latin and by the time he is through the 
twelfth year he can read Latin understandingly. 
The higher branches of mathematics are stud- 
ied from the sixth school year on. 

13 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

The pupil in the Volksschule has a very dif- 
ferent program. He is to be all his life one of 
the common people. He does not need foreign 
languages, and he gets none. He will need no 
higher mathematics in his lowly sphere, so he 
is taught only the rudiments of mathematics 
which deal with number work and simple meas- 
urement. In short, the Volksschule is a vernacu- 
lar, rudimentary school limited to eight years. 

There are two subjects which are taught in 
both schools, namely, history and religion. The 
history is chiefly German history. In the com- 
mon school it is emphatically German history. In 
the Gymnasium it is German history with some 
Greek and Roman history and a little modern 
history of other nations. 

ReHgion is taught throughout all schools. It 
is used as an effective means of teaching duty 
to the State and recognition of authority. Some 
of the references to the Deity which are made 
by the Kaiser and which fall on American ears 
with a strange and unintelligible sound can be 
understood when we remember that these refer- 
ences call up the associations drilled into the 
14 



UNDEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS 

minds of German boys and girls by constant 
instruction in German religion. Religion is an 
instrument in the hands of the ruling class to 
keep the people obedient. We in this country 
may scoff at the divine right of kings, but it is 
persistently kept before the children of the Ger- 
man Empire, and they can no more shake them- 
selves free from the doctrine than we can escape 
the conviction that a verb and its subject should 
agree in number. 

History and religion are taught in all schools, 
but the views which the pupils get in the two 
schools are as different as the views of a landscape 
seen now through the small end of a telescope, 
now through the large end. To the pupil of the 
Volksschule the voices of religion and history call 
to service and obedience. To the boy in the 
Gymnasium the call is to dominion and arrogant 
command. 

When one studies the German school system 
with a mind full of American traditions, one 
finds himself wondering how it comes about that 
people submit to this kind of separation. The 
answer to this wonder is to be found in his- 

15 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

tory. The German school system is a direct 
descendant of the first educational system of 
Europe. 

When the first schools grew up in Europe they 
were professional schools for the better classes. 
The common man did not read or write. A few 
of the nobility and the princes did. The clergy 
had a monopoly on the intellectual life of the 
nations except in so far as the rulers shared the 
things of the mind in moments of leisure when 
they were not waging war. So it came about that 
there were riding-schools for knights and schools 
of law for the nobility and schools of theology 
for the clergy, but the day of common schools 
was not yet. These early schools for the upper 
classes had in them no tolerance for democracy. 
The more the aristocracy could divide itself from 
the common people by training and by cultiva- 
tion of the intellectual arts, the more it made 
itself secure in its rule. The modern German 
Gymnasium has exactly the same spirit as had the 
aristocratic schools of the medieval period. The 
Gymnasium is a device for buttressing a power- 
ful aristocracy in its exclusive control of power 
i6 



UNDEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS 

through superior mastery of knowledge. The 
common herd has been deliberately held at a 
lower intellectual level in order that its mem- 
bers may accept without uprising a lower social 
standing and a more arduous service to the State. 

When common schools began they were mis- 
sion schools organized in the cathedrals to train 
choir boys and teach the people the catechism. 
Some charitable priest or monk would at times 
go beyond his formal duty and give the boys, as 
a reward for their contributions to the church 
service, an insight into the rudiments of arith- 
metic or some training in recognizing letters. 
The chief business of this mission school was, 
however, not to raise the boy up, but rather to 
drill him in service and obedience. So it is with 
the Volksschule of to-day. It is a school adapted 
to those who are to serve and are to be trained to 
be content with their lot. 

The situation to-day is the same as in the days 
of the early mission schools. The German com- 
mon school is the home of humility and pious 
acceptance of authority. Its training is free, 
given by a paternalistic State. The Gymnasium 
17 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

is the stronghold of an established aristocracy. 
Before the war ninety- two per cent of the chil- 
dren of Germany were in the common school. 
Eight per cent were in preparation for the privi- 
leges of aristocracy. The spirit of it all is ex- 
pressed in a remark made to the writer by a 
German university professor in 1913 in the city 
of Leipzig. The discussion had been on Amer- 
ican high schools and the 1,200,000 students 
then in these schools. "Such a number of stu- 
dents in German higher schools," said the pro- 
fessor of pedagogy, "would be the gravest kind 
of a social menace." 



Ill 

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN 
SYSTEM 

The early settlers in New England were demo- 
cratic in their educational ideals, at least to the 
point of demanding that every one should have 
some kind of training. They were all members 
of the same social class in theory if not in final 
practice. But the traditions of the Old World 
and the natural tendencies toward specialization 
were strong in determining the form of organi- 
zation which the schools even of that democratic 
community took on. There soon arose, on 
the one hand, a higher professional school with 
its special preparatory schools not unHke the 
aristocratic schools of Europe, and on the other 
hand, a lower common school which gave to 
the ordinary boy and girl some training in mat- 
ters of religion and in the art of reading necessary 
for a first-hand acquaintance with the Scriptures. 
The common school was in form much like its 
19 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

European predecessors. The higher professional 
school was not a part of the popular educational 
system. The subject-matter of instruction in 
the higher school was determined by special 
vocational demands. The lower school had its 
wholly non-professional task to perform and 
accordingly used non-professional material in 
its teaching. 

The statement ca,n be made concrete by quot- 
ing descriptions of the two kinds of institutions 
which appeared in the earliest years of New Eng- 
land history. The first of the higher institutions 
was Harvard College, founded by an act of the 
General Court of Massachusetts Bay in October, 
1636. The early charters of Harvard set forth 
the general purpose of the institution as that of 
taking all necessary provisions "that may con- 
duce to the education of the English and Indian 
youth of this country in knowledge and godli- 
ness.'' This general purpose was, however, in 
reahty subordinate to a special purpose. As ah 
investigator of the occupations of the early grad- 
uates of Harvard has put the matter in a mono- 
graph issued by the Bureau of Education: — 
20 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

A better idea of the motives of the founders than 
is discernible from the charter may be gained from a 
quotation from New England's First Fruits, pub- 
lished in 1643, the year after the first class grad- 
uated: — 

"One of the next things we longed for, and looked 
after, was to advance learning and perpetuate it to 
posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to 
the churches, when our present ministers shall lie 
in the dust. And as we were thinking and consult- 
ing how to effect this great work, it pleased God to 
stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly gentle- 
man and a lover of learning, then living amongst 
us) to give the one half of his estate toward the erect- 
ing of a college, and all his library.'* 

From this it is apparent that those who founded 
the institution primarily had in mind a theological 
seminary. The professions of the graduates for the 
early period bear witness to the fact that this was 
practically what the institution was. The ministry 
was the one profession most necessary, most de- 
manded by the society of that time, and this profes- 
sion more than any other required an advanced edu- 
cation. It is not surprising, therefore, to find this 
profession dominant during the early years of Har- 
vard's history. This dominance continues for over 
a century, and not until the period immediately 
following the Revolutionary War does any other 
21 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

profession claim so many of the graduates as the 
ministry.^ 

The same kind of a statement can be made for 
Yale and the other early schools of higher learn- 
ing. Furthermore, the preparatory schools which 
grew up around the colleges were controlled in 
the organization of their courses of study by 
the professional character of the college courses. 
It thus came to pass that in democratic New 
England there appeared a group of institutions 
which, in form of organization and in content of 
the course of study, were very like the aristo- 
cratic schools of Europe. Indeed, the Old- World 
models were closely and consciously followed in 
these schools. In the effort to provide preachers 
for their congregations the Puritans accepted a 
kind of class distinction which made the member 
of the professional class higher than the common 
citizen. 

The common schools of that day, like the first 
common schools of every nation, were organized 

* Bailey B. Burritt, Professional Distribution of College and 
University Graduates, p. 15. United States Bureau of Educa- 
tion, Bulletin, 191 2, no. 19. 

22 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

to give religious training to the ordinary boy and 
girl who had no thought of entering a profession 
and no thought of social exclusiveness. These 
schools were provided for very early in colonial 
history. One of the clearest statements of the 
purpose of the early colonial school is to be found 
in the Connecticut statute of 1650 which may be 
quoted as follows: — 

It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, 
to keep men from a knowledge of the Scriptures, as 
in former times, keeping them in an unknown tongue, 
so in these latter times, by persuading them from the 
use of tongues, so that, at least, the true sense and 
meaning of the original might be clouded by false 
glosses of saint-seeming deceivers; and that learning 
may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers 
[the court decreed that whenever a township in- 
creased to fifty householders they should employ 
some one] to teach all such children as shall resort 
to him, to write and read. 

As the centers of religious instruction pro- 
vided for in this and like statutes grew up in the 
various settlements, they tended naturally to ex- 
pand the scope of their interests. The school- 
master became a teacher, not merely of the 
23 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Scriptures, but also of the simple rules of arith- 
metic and of pemnanship. Later he introduced 
geography and history. The expansion of the 
common school was in the direction of general 
information, not toward the learned professioits.- 
With the higher professional schools, on the 
one hand, and the common school, on the other, 
New England had all the possibilities of a dual 
school system. But such was not the system 
which developed. Let us consider some of the 
reasons why the dual system was impossible. In 
the first place, there was no aristocracy to seize 
on the schools as a means of perpetuating its 
power. The exclusive professional class was not 
hereditary as it was in Europe. It could be en- 
tered by any boy who would prepare himself to 
enter the clergy. In the second place, the reli- 
gion which was accepted and practiced by all 
was a common code of personal responsibilities 
and in this code one man was like every other. 
Religion tended in New England to make men 
obedient to God, but not to one another. The 
common participation in the church service made 
it impossible for the professional aristocracy to 
?4 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

keep aloof from the common people. Thus it 
came about that the only exclusive class created 
by the New England educational system, 
namely, the clergy, was in practical life brought 
back into the most intimate contact with the 
ordinary people. Another reason grows out of 
the frontier conditions which obtained even a 
few miles out of Boston. In the little groups of 
settlers which made their way into the wilder- 
ness, exclusiveness would have been impossible 
had any one desired it. There was in each settle- 
ment perhaps one boy in five years who prepared 
for college. For this one boy there could be no 
dual school system. At least in his early years, 
in common with the other children, he was 
trained in letters and reHgion by the one and 
only school which the community could afford. 
Later the preacher might take an interest in giv- 
ing him special tutoring, or the boy might be 
sent for a time to a preparatory school. In either 
case the major part of his school experience was 
in common with the pupils who were not going 
to a professional school. 
Under conditions such as have been sketched, 
25 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

only one possible kind of exclusiveness could 
grow up. The higher schools could detach them- 
selves from the lower schools and could become 
separate in their methods and in their content 
of instruction. There was no possibility of a 
longitudinal split which would leave two parallel 
school systems. There was the possibility of a 
breach dividing the top from the bottom. This 
cleavage in the vertical unfortunately came and 
still in some measure divides our American 
schools. 

The results of this cleavage between upper and 
lower schools will be considered more fully later. 
For the present we turn to three significant facts 
with regard to the internal organization of the 
early schools of New England which may be 
referred to as partial antidotes for the undemo- 
cratic cleavage between upper and lower schools. 
The inherent push toward democracy was strong 
in New England education in spite of the handi- 
caps which came from partial imitation of Old- 
World institutions. 

The first of these significant facts was clearly 
set forth in the quotation from the Connecticut 
26 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

statute given above. The early school of New 
England was a school where each child was 
brought into direct personal contact with the 
Scriptures. The Puritans had left their homes in 
Europe because they were unwilling to have any 
one stand between the individual and his direct 
personal contact with truth. In Europe there 
had been human authorities who parceled out 
the truth as they saw fit. In Europe to-day there 
is the same spirit. If one goes to a German Volks- 
schule, one finds that instruction is predomi- 
nantly oral. The teacher gives information orally 
to the children. This information has the stamp 
of official approval and it is officially safeguarded. 
The children get what the teacher gives and no 
more. There is no reference library in any 
Volksschule, Even in such a subject as geography, 
there is no textbook full of facts about all the 
countries in the world. The most impressive 
contrast between American schools and those of 
Europe to-day is that American schools are read- 
ing schools while the schools of Europe are schools 
where instruction is given orally by the teacher. 
The far-reaching meaning of this fact, not 
27 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

alone for our school organization, but also for 
our national life, can hardly be overstated. The 
common man in this country demands the right 
to know through his own reading what is hap- 
pening in the world. It may be that our news- 
papers are sensational and full of matter which 
cannot be defended as upHfting, but on the other 
side it is equally certain that they bring directly 
to the hands of the common people the materials 
out of which pubHc opinion is made. Our people 
read and form their opinions. There is no author- 
ity which they will accept in place of their own 
judgments. This present-day situation has its 
roots in the fact that the Puritans estabHshed a 
reading school. 

In a number of countries on the other side of 
the Atlantic there are to be found newspapers of 
a type which the American cannot understand. 
They are not intended to be complete or impar- 
tial. They are the instruments of control of an 
aristocratic government. Such newspapers will 
always be found in countries where instruction 
in the common school is oral. 

There are other nations in the world, such as 
'28 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

Mexico and Russia, where the newspaper can 
have no extensive influence because the people 
are illiterate. Democracy may be threatened by 
disorganization in such countries, but democracy 
has in the domination of a skillful aristocracy 
an enemy more powerful than disorganization. 
jj The Puritans laid the only sure foundations of 
both democracy and organization when they 
established a school which lays its chief emphasis 
on reading and gives unlimited training in this 
art to every boy and girl. 

The second general fact of organization which 
is important to the student of American schools 
is that these schools were local in their manage- 
ment and control. If we put the matter in terms 
of the present-day situation, we may point out 
that there is no other great nation which is 
without a national minister of education clothed 
with authority. In the United States there is no 
national school system, no Federal authority in 
charge of our educational organization. There 
is a National Bureau of Education within the 
Department of the Interior, but its functions are 
purely and simply those of collecting statistical 
29 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

information about schools and taking care of 
Alaskan reindeer. Local control has slowly given 
place in the more progressive States to centralized 
supervision in certain matters. The growth of 
central authority has, however, been handi- 
capped by jealousy on the part of local officials, 
with the result that State departments often 
have Httle more authority than has the National 
Bureau. 

It sometimes requires superlative optimism 
to be complacent under the present-day local 
control of schools. Back in the old days of the 
town meeting the citizens took an interest in the 
teacher, the course of study, and the school build- 
ing. They were aware of the problems that arose 
in educating their children. All through our his- 
tory individual parents have been interested in 
these problems, sometimes to the extent of inter- 
fering with the schools; but as municipalities 
have grown the public has often allowed its large 
control of the schools to slip into the hands of 
cheap poHticians and cowardly servants. Schools 
are locally controlled to-day — often very badly. 

In 1837, Horace Mann, who had just been 
30 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

appointed secretary of the State Board of Edu- 
cation of Massachusetts, surveyed the schools 
of that State and, seeing the wretched conditions 
which resulted from lack of supervision, made 
the statement, that the greatest catastrophe 
which had ever come to the State was the crea- 
tion of independent school districts. 

One cannot speak too vigorously about the 
defects of the district system and of local con- 
trol. There is, however, one compensation for 
all the defects. A school system under local 
control can never become the tool of an aristo- 
cratic government. American schools may be as 
bad as the most severe critic pleases, but they 
are democratic. 

The writer recalls a conversation with the 
eminent head of the schools of Munich who had 
visited American schools a few years before. 
In contrasting German schools with American 
schools he said: "We have no bad schools be- 
cause all our schools are controlled from above. 
But we have no superlatively good schools. You 
in America have all kinds from the very worst 
to the very best. You have the advantage over 
31 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

us, on the whole, because some day you will be 
led by the examples of your excellent schools to 
a general improvement." This is the view of 
an observer of democracy who is not deceived 
by the apparent excellences of an artificial sys- 
tem. 

There are in the United States to-day many 
plans and much discussion dealing with this 
problem of local control. We have enjoyed 
nearly to the full the fluctuating fortunes of 
local reforms and counter-reforms. We have 
been extremely democratic and partially cen- 
tralized. We have been moving gradually in the 
direction of more control by State departments. 
What will the future bring? One element of the 
answer is clear. We cannot now have a dual and 
undemocratic system of schools. Local control, 
whatever its shortcomings, has carried us past 
that danger. (Our task now is the constructive 
task of building up a new kind of central con- \ 
trol — one which grows out of democracy and 
preserves its contributions while eliminating the 
defects of its crude beginnings. 

The third characteristic of the New England 
32 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

school which must be discussed in order to make 
clear its democratic character has to do with 
its neglect of vocational training. The higher 
schools, as has been repeatedly shown, were 
vocational schools preparing chiefly for the 
clergy. ^The lower school was a general school 
making no vocational distinctions whatsoever. 
Everybody had a soul to save, and that was the 
only concern of the common school. The boy 
might later become a farmer or a carpenter; the 
girl would become a housewife; but these were 
not matters for the common school to think of 
at all. 

Perhaps the simplest way to make this mat- 
ter clear is to quote a statute passed by Connec- 
ticut at the same time that the school law above 
quoted brought into being the reading school. 
This statute on vocational training sets up an 
entirely different machinery of training and an 
absolutely different kind of governmental control. 
The law required that 

all parents and masters do breed and bring up 
their children and apprentices in some honest lawful 
labor, or employment, either in husbandry or some 

33 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

other trade profitable for themselves and the com- 
monwealth, if they will not nor cannot train them 
up in learning, to fit them for higher employments, 
and if any of the selectmen, after admonition by 
them given to such masters of families, shall find 
them still negligent of their duty, . . . the said select- 
men, with the help of two magistrates, shall take such 
children or apprentices from them, and place them 
with some masters for years, boys until they come 
to be twenty-one, and girls to eighteen years of age 
complete. 

This statement was of little avail. The read- 
ing school had a schoolmaster to promote its 
interests. Its organization was institutional 
and effective. Vocational education was left to 
diffuse and ineffective control. The reason why 
vocational education had to be rediscovered is 
perfectly clear in view of this history. 

The omission of vocational training from the 
schools of this country made it easy for these 
schools to develop in a strictly democratic 
fashion, especially during the period when edu- 
cation was very limited in its scope. If only a 
few weeks a year are to be given to the school- 
ing of children, there is enough general matter 
34 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

needed by all of them to fill profitably the school 
day and the school year. The school will nat- 
urally be limited throughout its curriculum to 
a common body of material administered alike 
to all pupils. 

We are facing to-day a difficult problem in 
trying to keep our schools democratic and at 
the same time meet the demand for differen- 
tiated courses giving trade training to some and 
purely academic training to others. This pres- 
sure was evaded in early years because of the 
simplicity of the school program. As schools 
developed, however, and stretched over more 
days and years, it began to be a question whether 
a simple body of common material is all that is 
required. Furthermore, there has come in re- 
cent years tremendous social pressure from the 
business world. We are told by manufacturers 
that our children must be trained in industrial 
processes if America is to compete with the Old 
World. On the other side of the Atlantic na- 
tions have given children training in the voca- 
tions. This training has made them skillful. 
To be sure, specialized training has been easier 
35 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

to organize there than it will be here because a 
boy who is going into the trades over there 
knows it early and is willing to accept obediently 
his task in life. Our democratic system is con^ 
fronted by a thousand difficulties not known in 
a land where people are pigeon-holed at birth. 
But we must do something. What shall it be? 

Just before the war there were some self- 
appointed prophets who clamored in our ears 
that we must follow the example of Prussia. 
They were proposing to our legislatures the 
passing of laws that should divide our school 
system into two compartments. These voices 
are not yet silent, and when the stress of indus- 
trialism comes in the future America will again 
be called on to defend the fundamental democ- 
racy of her common schools. The future defense 
cannot lie in neglecting vocational education. 
There must be a positive policy to meet our 
needs. This positive policy will doubtless change 
the character of the upper grades of our elemen- 
tary schools. Courses will be offered to meet 
the many needs of different children. In order 
to keep the children in these many different 

36 



THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SYSTEM 

courses interested in a central body of common 
material there will have to be a new study of 
what is required to train a citizen of a democ- 
racy. There will be much need of wise counsel 
and careful experimentation. 

There is one lesson that our past should teach 
us. We must not seek an easy solution of our 
problem by borrowing a European institution. 
We did that once with sad consequences, as the 
next chapter will show. 



IV 

UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

The natural evolution of the schools of the 
United States received a very material check 
through the importation into this country be- 
tween 1840 and 1850 of the German Volksschule. 
The conditions that led to this disastrous im- 
portation of a foreign institution had long been 
in process of preparation. The spirit of colonial 
days with its rigorous devotion to religion and 
its violent reaction against European modes of 
life had given place to a new spirit of secularism 
and to a lack of rigid control in the various dis- 
tricts which made it very easy for public-minded 
leaders to desire something like the organiza- 
tion exhibited in Europe. 

During the period immediately following the 
Revolution the schools of the United States 
sank to a lower ebb than ever before. The peo- 
ple of different States had very different ideals 
in such matters and there was no national su- 

38 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

pervision of schools. Indeed, when the States 
framed the Constitution there was no disposi- 
tion to take up matters of education. The New 
England educational plan, which grew out of 
the town meeting and the demand for strict 
religious instruction, was not acceptable to the 
Virginian who had grown up in a region of great 
plantations and private tutoring. When the 
Constitution was written education was left 
out, leaving the States and smaller communi- 
ties to deal with their own problems. 

It is hardly to be wondered at that these 
smaller units of population neglected educa- 
tional matters in their efforts to meet the first 
emergencies of community Hfe. They were ab- 
sorbed in making roads and developing indus- 
tries. The house has to be built before the fam- 
ily Hfe of the home can begin, and so the school 
waited for other matters of more obvious and 
immediate concern. 

How meager the school equipment was can 
be learned from some of the original documents. 
The following extracts from a school report of 
1801 made by a committee in Taunton, Massa- 

39 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

chusetts, show what schools were like in that 
day: — 

January 6th, 1801. Your committee visited a 
school kept in Rueben Richmond's house instructed 
by Mrs. Nabby Williams of 32 scholars. This school 
appeared in an uncultivated state the greater part 
of the scholars. 

On the 26 of Feb., visited Mrs. Nabby Williams' 
school the second time and found that the scholars 
had made great proficiency in reading, spelling, 
writing and some in the grammar of the English 
language. 
.j^ Nov. loth, the committee visited and examined 
' two Schools just opened; one kept in a school house, 
near Baylies works, of the number of 40 scholars, 
instructed by Mr. Philip Lee. This School we found 
to have made but small proficiency in reading, spell- 
ing and writing, and to be kept only six or seven 
weeks; upon inquiry why it should be taught no 
longer, we were informed that the ratio of school 
money for this School was and had been usually 
expended in paying the Master both for his service 
and board, and ia purchasing the fire wood which-is 
contrary to the usual custom of the town. 

The other School, visited the same day, was kept 
near John Reed's consisting of the number of be- 
tween 30 and 40 Scholars instructed by Mr. William 
40 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

Reed; This School, being formed into regular classes, 
appeared to have made a good and pleasing pro- 
ficiency in reading, spelling, writing, some in arith- 
metic and others in the Grammar of the EngUsh 
language. This School's share of school money is 
expended to pay the Master for his service only, so 
that the School will be continued three months. 

On the 8th day of December they visited a School 
kept in a School house near Seth Hodges, in nxmiber 
30 Scholars instructed by Mr. John Dunbar. This 
School appeared in a good way of learning, and to be 
keep four months. 

Jan. 9th, 1 801, visited a School kept by Mr. 
Thomas Macomber at the house of one Caswel in 
the precinct of 35 scholars. This School appeared 
very uncultivated. Many Scholars were not fur- 
nished with books, a striking mark of negligence 
some where. This evil must have a remedy, if we 
expect to receive the benefit of a school education. 

Feby. 23rd, again visited Mr. Macomber's school 
the scholars remain uncultivated and in a poor way 
to improve an evident mark of neglect of their parents 
in furnishing books is a great evil in this school. The 
committee were unable to judge of the improvement 
of this school as its situation was changed, and a 
great part were new faces. Whenever a School 
changes ground, it ought to be the duty of the School 

41 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Masters to give notice to the Committee for the 
change is so great that it is almost like closing a 
School. 

Feby. 26th, visited Mr. Dean's School 2 time, the 
Scholars were crowded into a small room, the air 
was exceedingly noxious. Many children were 
obliged to tarry at home for want of room and 
though the school was kept only a few weeks they 
were deprived of its advantages. A want of books 
was the complaint. The committee were anxiously 
desirous that this evil might have a remedy and were 
of opinion it may be easily done. The Scholars ap- 
peared to increase in knowledge & claim our appro- 
bation. 

March 5th, visited two schools, one kept at Mr. 
Aaron Pratt's of the number of 30 scholars instructed 
by Mr. Philip Drown. This school appeared quite 
unimproved, and uncultivated in reading and spell- 
ing, some of them did better in writing. This uncul- 
tivated state did not appear to be from a fault in the 
children but, as your committee were informed, from 
the disadvantage of having had masters illegally 
qualified for their instruction; of which class is their 
present master unauthorized by law.^ 

1 Reprinted in the Report of the School Committee of the City 
of Taunton^ Mass., for the year ending December 31, 1915, 
pp. 68-73. 

42 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

The conditions shown in these quotations did 
not improve materially for thirty-five years. 
There was no regular course of study. Some- 
times the teacher was fairly well trained and 
was eager to give the pupils a broad training. 
More commonly this was not true. In any case 
the course of study depended on the training of 
the teacher and the will of the community. 

The school year was at most a few weeks in 
the winter. At this time in the year the pupils 
could be spared from the work of the farm. The 
cost of keeping schools in operation had to be 
considered, and most communities were slow to 
keep the schools open for any great length of 
time because of the expense entailed. Schools 
of four months' duration were considered long 
and generous. Many communities were satis- 
fied with much less. 

The duration of a pupil's school career was at 
that time quite indefinite. The big boys and 
girls of the district came to school year after 
year. If the teacher was able to manage them, 
they stayed. If not, they sometimes disposed 
of the teacher, and sometimes retired peace- 
43 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

fully only to try the experiment again the next 
year with the new teacher. The only governing 
consideration in most cases was the possession 
by the boy or girl of the necessary leisure and 
inclination. Girls went until they got married 
and boys until they hired out or became respon- 
sible citizens with more important duties to per- 
form. 

Such conditions could not go on indefinitely. 
After communities became prosperous and after 
the most urgent problems of mere living had 
been solved, there arose a demand for better 
schools. The State was called in to supervise 
and direct this public interest. Indeed, the mid- 
dle of the last century was a period of general 
assertion by the States of their rights and of 
general assumption at State capitals of duties 
of pubhc organization. 

In 1837, the State of Massachusetts organ- 
ized a board of education and appointed Hor- 
ace Mann as its executive secretary. At about 
the same period New York, Ohio, and Michigan 
began to work out new school laws and estab- 
lish improved schools. 

44 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

It was inevitable that the leaders of that day 
should be shocked by what they found in the 
schools. The lack of organization and the ab- 
sence of supervision were too obvious to es- 
cape attention. It is vain to speculate on what 
might have happened if these leaders had worked 
out an American institution. What they did 
was to accept the European model. 

There was in 1830 in Prussia a school organi- 
zation of the same type as that which exists to- 
day. The essential features were sketched in an 
earlier chapter. There was a religious com- 
mon school. This school drew its teachers from 
a separate normal training school. Its course 
of study was exclusively vernacular and rudi- 
mentary, but it was compact in its organization. 
Its discipline of the children was complete. It 
was the servant of the State and under the most 
complete supervision of the officers of the State. 
Entirely apart from this common school was 
the school of the aristocracy with its connec- 
tions with higher institutions. In short, the 
Prussian school system was a machine running 
smoothly, and it was well in hand under the 
45 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

supervision of officials who were equipped with 
authority to control its operations. 

It is Httle wonder that American leaders were 
impressed by the organization of the Prus- 
sian schools. Their enthusiasm found expres- 
sion in statements full of praise and in active 
efforts to induce American legislatures to imi- 
tate the Prussian organization. The story of 
this period is vividly told in a bulletin of the 
United States Bureau of Education prepared by 
Mr. F. F. Bunker. 

Quotations from three of the documents of 
that period will give the reader a view of the 
earnestness of these advocates of the Prussian 
system. Mr. Bunker's paragraph introducing 
one of these quotations may be quoted with 
the paragraph itself as follows: — 

In 1843 Horace Mann visited the schools of Ger- 
many and of other European countries. An account 
of his visit is given in his seventh annual report to 
the board of education of Massachusetts (January, 
1844). In this report he recommended the organiza- 
tion and grading of the German schools in the follow- 
ing words: — 

46 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

"I do not hesitate to say that there are many 
things abroad which we at home should do well to 
imitate — things, some of which are here as yet mere 
matters of speculation and theory, but which, there, 
have long been in operation and are now producing 
a harvest of rich and abundant blessings. Among the 
nations of Europe Prussia has long enjoyed the most 
distinguished reputation for the excellence of its 
schools. In reviews, in speeches, in tracts, and even 
in graver works devoted to the cause of education, 
its schools have been exhibited as models for the imi- 
tation of the rest of Christendom." ^ 

Again from a pamphlet by Charles Brooks 
published in 1864 is extracted the following: — 

"The Prussian system, with its two central powers, 
a board of education, and normal schools, was not 
known in New England when I first described it, in 
public, in 1835; but on the 19th of April, 1838, Mas- 
sachusetts, the banner State, adopted State normal 
schools by statute. Remembering well how the good 
leaven spread in 183 5-1 83 8, 1 say it was the Prussian 
system which wrought out the educational regenera- 
tion of New England." ^ 

1 Frank Forest Bunker, Reorganization of the Public School 
System, pp. 24-25. United States Bureau of Education, Bulle- 
tin, 1916, no. 8. 

* Ibid., p. 22. 

47 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Finally, from a Western State comes the state- 
ment made by a superintendent of public edu- 
cation, Francis W. Shearman, of Michigan, in 
1852: — 

"The system of public instruction which was in- 
tended to be established by the framers of the con- 
stitution [Michigan], the conception of the office, its 
province, its powers, and duties were derived from 
Prussia." ^ 

The enthusiasm for Prussia had its effects 
not only in the United States, but also in Can- 
ada. Ryerson, the superintendent of schools 
who gave form to the system of Ontario in the 
late forties, explicitly acknowledged his indebt- 
edness to Prussia for the course of study of the 
elementary schools. 

One very striking fact about this whole move- 
ment is that it was limited to the common 
schools. One can hardly help wondering at this 
distance why these enthusiasts did not borrow 
the higher schools as well. Perhaps the answer 
to this question is to be found in the fact that 
they were democratic enough to be interested 
1 Frank Forest Bunker, op. cit., p. 23. 

48 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

only in the common people. It was the common 
school of this country which was chaotic. It was 
the common school which lacked clearly de- 
fined aims and ends. There were certain higher 
schools in the country, but they were able to 
take care of themselves fairly well. The com- 
mon schools were important because they dealt 
with more people and were entirely dependent 
on public support. 

Whatever the reason, it is quite certain that 
it was the Volksschule^ not the Gymnasium, that 
was borrowed. This borrowing would not have 
been so disastrous as it was if the negative char- 
acteristics of the Volksschule were not so essen- 
tially a part of that institution. The Volksschule 
is intended to terminate the training of the 
common people. Its material of instruction is 
selected with this end constantly in view. Limi- 
tation of educational opportunity is not acciden- 
tal or due merely to meagerness of opportunity. 
In the Volksschule limitation is conscious, ex- 
plicit, and a definite part of the whole scheme. 

The Volksschule is negative in that it for- 
bids teaching a foreign language or algebra. 

49 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Advanced subjects are verhoten because such 
advanced subjects might disturb the social 
equilibrium. It was this negative, explicitly 
limiting school which in the middle of the last 
century we exchanged for our chaotic and only 
partially successful district school. So it has 
come about that for three quarters of a century 
American boys and girls have been compelled 
to spend the first years of their school lives 
within the artificial walls that the traditions of 
medievaHsm and the will of aristocracy have 
thrown around the common people of Ger- 
many. 

The negative characteristics of the course of 
study of the common schools were not seriously 
harmful in 1850 because the schools were lim- 
ited in other ways. The school year was short. 
There v/as not time enough to go far afield in 
the world of knowledge. That the school must 
hold to the vernacular and to rudiments was 
dictated in some measure by the meagerness'of 
support to the school itself. Teachers, too, were 
little trained, and they could hardly have done 
more even if it had been demanded. So the bor- 

50 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

rowing of a limited school was no such misdeed 
as it would be to-day. We may even go so far 
as to say that it was not the borrowing that did 
the harm. We of a later generation are in re- 
ality the sinners, for we have blindly followed 
the example of the Volksschule long after it be- 
came evident — painfully evident — that this 
school did not belong in America. 

The limited course of study borrowed in 1840 
became undesirable just as soon as the school 
year was lengthened sufficiently so that the ru- 
dimentary branches did not supply adequate 
material for the years of elementary instruc- 
tion. Take for example arithmetic. There was 
perhaps enough arithmetic to last for twelve 
or sixteen weeks a year through eight years. 
But when twelve weeks were expanded into 
five months, and later into six, seven, eight, and 
nine, it became quite impossible for arithmetic 
to be legitimately extended so as to fill the time. 
The fact is that later generations of teachers 
should have known enough to realize that they 
had reached the end of arithmetic, but they 
were dominated by the Volksschule idea of hold- 
51 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

ing to rudimentary courses. They exercised all 
the ingenuity they had in trying to inflate arith- 
metic so that it would seem to fill the elemen- 
tary course. They put in impossible and gro- 
tesque problems and they gathered together 
matters from the world of economics which 
were entirely unintelligible to children, but they 
saw to it that children did not escape from the 
rudimentary mathematics, which is arithmetic. 

Nor was the evil of the Prussian example 
limited to what it gave in the way of artificial 
emphasis on rudiments. When we took over the 
Volksschule we did no halfway borrowing. We 
made it the only lower school. At home the Prus- 
sian aristocrat provides for his own boy another 
school where opportunity is unlimited. In the 
aristocratic school there is no need for inflating 
arithmetic because the boy is pushed as soon 
as possible into higher subjects. In America we 
did not set up the Volksschule plus something 
else; we made the limited school the vestibule 
to our whole educational scheme. The result 
has been that we have deliberately held back 
those destined to take higher courses. For ex- 
52 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

ample, with us the doctor arrives late at his 
professional maturity because he spent so much 
time and effort on rudiments in the element- 
ary school. He was kept back when he ought 
to have gone forward into the advanced sub- 
jects which would have prepared him for his 
profession. 

In Prussia the doctor-in-training is not sub- 
ject to the limitations of the Volkssckule. The 
boy in Germany who is to be a doctor is edu- 
cated in the Gymnasium, In that school he is 
rushed into the advanced subjects just as early 
as possible. There is no marking time. The 
professional goal is always in sight, and the 
tracks are cleared ahead for the journey. The 
result is that the German doctor enters his pro- 
fession two years ahead of the American doctor. 
Those two years are of the greatest significance 
in a professional career. They supply the mar- 
gin that makes of the average physician abroad 
a scientist as well as a practitioner. This ex- 
plains why our physicians used to go abroad to 
learn the advanced science of their profession. 

Whether we think of the effect of the bor- 
53 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

rowing of 1840 on the elementary school or on 
the other branches of our educational system, 
it is evident that there is only one formula which 
we ought now to adopt. This borrowing must 
be corrected by whatever reorganization is nec- 
essary. 

The upper grades of the elementary school 
are the points where reform must begin and 
where it must be most radical. Our seventh and 
eighth grades show more than any other grades 
the blighting influences of the Prussian exam- 
ple. In the effort to keep these grades rudimen- 
tary, they have been filled with the most monot- 
onous, unnecessary, and discouraging reviews. 
Seventh- and eighth-grade teachers are more 
than half aware that elementary education is 
over when pupils enter these grades. So they 
labor conscientiously to poHsh the product of 
these schools. They go over and over again 
work which has been completed in earlier years. 
They keep young minds, which are eager to 
push out into the world, forcibly restrained by 
a kind of trivial intellectual busy-work. They 
hold the high school before the pupils of the 
54 



UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

eighth grade as a place where one can succeed 
only when one is perfect in arithmetic and oral 
reading and spelling. The curious part of the 
situation is that every elementary-school teacher 
who has been through high school knows full 
well that one does not have to be perfect in any- 
thing, least of all in arithmetic, oral reading, and 
spelling, to be an honored member of the stu- 
dent body of a high school. The insistent re- 
views of the eighth grade are not real needs of 
the twentieth century. They are inheritances 
from a far-off land and a long-past day. From 
that remote place and time there came the edict 
that the sons and daughters of the common folk 
shall be taught for eight years and that then 
•the teaching shall cease. The American teacher 
who halts before the eight-year Hne is con- 
trolled, not by a real fact, but by an imaginary 
boundary. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR AN UNDIVIDED 
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

The Volksschule has been an obstacle to our 
educational development, but fortunately it 
has not supplied the only form of school organi- 
zation in this country. Even its outward forms 
have never become universal. The Volksschule 
is an eight-year school. Our schools have been 
largely drawn into this form of organization, 
but there has always been a fringe of experi- 
mentation which has saved us from a rigid sys- 
tem. In New England we have nine- and ten- 
year elementary schools. In the Southern States 
we have, especially since the Civil War, whole 
State systems with only seven-year elementary 
schools. In all parts of the country there are 
schools which have forms of organization other 
than that dictated by the Prussian example. 

Perhaps the most notable deviation from the 
eight-year program is to be found in the sys- 
S6 



AN UNDIVIDED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

tern of Kansas City, Missouri, where seven-year 
schools have been in successful operation for a 
generation. 

Not only has practice thus differed, but there 
has been strong advocacy in earlier years of 
reforms of even more radical types. The Com- 
mittee of Ten of the National Education Asso- 
ciation proposed in the early nineties a com- 
plete revision of the elementary program so that 
the school below the high school should be only 
six years in length. 

Against these radical influences the Volks- 
schule has been able to stand and stands to-day 
as the most common type of organization. Espe- . 
cially subtle is its influence in limiting the course 
of study. Even where, as in New England, more 
than eight years have been given to the elemen- 
tary school, the additional time has been wasted 
in useless reviews and repetitions. 

Reforms in the elementary school promise to 
be made from above if not from within. If the 
elementary-school teachers do not change the 
character of seventh- and eighth-grade instruc- 
tion, it is likely that the high school will compel 
57 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

the change and that pressure from the profes- 
sional schools will help the reform. 

The intimate influence of the upper schools on 
the elementary schools of this country is one of 
the factors of the educational situation which 
has no parallel in Prussia. There the Volksschule 
has gone on its way undemocratized because it is 
a separate school. The moment this school was 
transplanted to America, it was given a new set- 
ting, and this new setting resulted in changes 
which, though gradual, are sure to transform it 
ultimately and make it into something that it 
could not be on its native soil. 

Before the common school was made over to 
fit the Prussian example, there had been growing 
up in America a pecuHarly American institution 
which was not seriously disturbed in its evolution 
by the borrowing of 1840. This was the American 
academy. 

All through the eighteenth century academies 
had appeared in response to popular demand. Iff 
the first half of the nineteenth century they flour- 
ished. In villages and towns surrounded by 
groups of district schools academies were estab- 
S8 



AN UNDIVIDED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

lished for older pupils. Not infrequently such a 
school was supported by some evangelical organi- 
zation which was keenly alive to the desirability 
of combining the secular and religious instruction 
of its young people. Sometimes the academy was 
endowed by a citizen or was maintained out of 
tuition fees and a small subsidy from the public 
taxes. In any case, it expressed the demand on 
the part of the people for something beyond that 
which the district school could supply. 

The ambitions of the academy were un- 
bounded. The course of study included what- 
ever the teachers knew. So the academy offered 
courses in metaphysics and theology, in art and 
literature. Foreign languages, especially French, 
were taught. General history and other subjects 
intended to broaden the experiences of students 
were conspicuous in the curriculum. All this 
wealth of training was open to girls as well as 
boys. 

To be sure, there are evidences that this en- 
riched course of study was influenced not a little 
by the practices of the older grammar school. 
There was no escape from the classical traditions 
59 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

of that school, and the academy in order to be 
respectable offered what the grammar school 
offered. A curious mixture grew up as a result. 
The ambition of the common people was to give 
to all the young people a broad and complete 
education. They could not satisfy their own 
ambition without including in the new school all 
that had been approved in the higher schools of 
the past. 

When in due time, after the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, the high school of the type which 
is common to-day united the grammar school 
and the academy into a single institution, the 
mixture of ambitions and the composite course 
of study were taken over into the new school. It 
is quite possible to hear to-day at any meeting 
of high-school teachers the echoes of the old dis- 
pute. Is a high school a classical school prepara- 
tory to the college and to the professions, or is 
the high school the higher common school? 

Several facts should be emphasized in order 
that we may fully understand the influence of 
the academy and of the high school on the evo- 
lution of the common school. First, the high 
60 



AN UNDIVIDED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

school as it was finally developed out of the 
fusion of the two older schools was open to all 
comers. The only requirement was the comple- 
tion of the elementary course. Second, this school 
came in due time to be as free as the common 
school. Third, boys and girls entered on a like 
footing and have continued to have equally free 
access to the enlarged opportunity. The Ameri- 
can high school is in reahty a part of the free 
public-school system. In our day progressive 
States have fully recognized this and have per- 
fected the organization to the point where every 
boy or girl in the State is provided with free 
admission to some high school even where there 
is none in the immediate district in which he or 
she lives. In such cases the home district or the 
State pays tuition and in some cases the cost of 
travel. As a part of the public-school system, 
the high school has influenced the other branch 
of this system — the elementary school. 

The influence of one school on the other has 

grown stronger as the number of pupils passing 

on from the lower school has increased. It is an 

important fact for elementary schools that to- 

6i 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

day it is the desire of the great majority of fani- 
ilies that their children have a high-school course. 
This is in part a result of economic prosperity. 
The majority of families can afford to give their 
children more schooling than is provided by the 
elementary school. In part the desire is an expres- 
sion of a genuine respect for training. At all 
events, the result is very impressive. There are 
at the present time in the high schools of the 
United States thirty per cent of all who are of 
high-school age. This numerical fact alone shows 
how far progress has been made toward the fusion 
of the elementary school with the high school. 

The foregoing paragraphs make clear the his- 
torical reason why we do not have in the United 
States two different school systems — one ele- 
mentary and the other advanced. In this country 
the high school literally grew out of the elemen- 
tary school. The separation between the com- 
mon school and the grammar school which might 
have led to two school systems was obliterated 
by the evolution of the academy and the amalga- 
mation of the academy with the grammar school. 
The academy was an institution of the common 
62 



AN UNDIVIDED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

people and it dominated the organization of the 
high school far enough to prevent any paralleHng 
in the high school of the work of the elementary 
school. The American high school is thus dif- 
ferent from all European secondary schools; the 
latter always include primary grades and inter- 
mediate grades as well as the upper grades which 
are alone included in our high schools. 

Thus it has come about that in America we 
have a single continuous school system. What- 
ever the differences between the schools within 
this system, in outward form we have a single 
unified system. 

It may be well to digress for a little at this 
point in order to show how important is the imity 
of the school system of the United States. The 
English effort to achieve something of the same 
kind has been most earnest and protracted. Eng- 
land has, as have the other countries of Europe, 
common schools for the ordinary people and sepa- 
rate schools for the aristocracy. The common 
schools of England began as missionary enter- 
prises and are now characterized by the fact that 
they are free. They are socially of a lower grade 
63 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

than the schools of the aristocracy which are 
known as "secondary schools." Even to-day it 
is not permissible for one who is well-to-do to 
send one's children to the comnaon school. The 
secondary schools are tuition schools with an 
extensive curriculum and they train the favored 
children of the better families from their early 
years. This system could not continue as a hard- 
and-fast system of separation in democratic Eng- 
land. The plan was accordingly devised of allow- 
ing bright children to transfer from the limited 
common school into the unHmited secondary 
school, provided they show themselves able to 
pass an examination. Furthermore, there are 
many "bursaries," as they are called, or "scholar- 
ships" as we should call them, which are awarded 
to those who do well in these examinations. A 
bright child thus has the secondary-school course 
made free and accessible through examination. 

The term "educational ladder" was coined by 
Matthew Arnold, when he was an inspector 
under the English Board of Education, to de- 
scribe this plan of allowing a child from the com- 
mon school to cross over into the higher schools. 
64 



AN UNDIVIDED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

That the opportunity is highly appreciated is 
attested by many facts. In 1902 the number of 
secondary schools was greatly increased. Muni- 
cipal institutions of secondary grade are now 
common, offering large and varied opportunities 
of a type desired by the boys and girls of the 
common families; and a great many children are 
passing over from the common school into these 
democratic secondary institutions. There is only 
one difficulty. The crossing is not as easy as the 
common people desire. One of the labor leaders 
put the matter vigorously by saying, "We want 
not merely an educational ladder; we want what 
they have in America, an educational stairway.'' 
The English system of transfer by examination 
is often objected to by the teachers in the sec- 
ondary schools. Suppose, for example, that a 
boy from the common school transfers when he 
is twelve years old. On arriving at the secondary 
school, he finds that boys of his age who began in 
their earHer years in the secondary school have 
had certain courses which were not supplied in 
the common school. For example, the common- 
school boy has had no French or Latin while 
6s 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

the secondary-school boys have been studying 
these subjects several years. The conservative 
teachers in the secondary schools are outspoken 
in their criticism of the transfer system because 
of the difficulty of assimilating the new pupils. 

The digression will help us to appreciate the 
unique character of our unified school system. 
The American academy did not begin as a paral- 
lel and separate secondary school. It was an 
outgrowth of the lower school. 

We cannot fail to recognize the fact that there 
is something of a break between our elementary 
schools and our high schools in spite of the prom- 
ise of the academy. It is known to every one 
who has passed through our educational system 
that the elementary school stops and the high 
school begins, sometimes with a noticeable jolt 
to the student. The break is our inheritance 
from an undemocratic past. It represents the 
degree of our failure to assimilate the lower and 
higher schools into a single system. 

The break in our school system shows itself in 
externals and in matters of internal organization. 
The high school is usually in a building entirely 
66 



AN UNDIVIDED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

separate from the grades. Not uncommonly 
there are different people in charge. Sometimes 
the boards of education of the two schools are 
different. Commonly the principal of the high 
school is a man who has no connection with the 
lower schools. 

In the treatment of students the high school 
and the elementary school are very different. 
The high school accords the individual student 
great liberty. He is usually allowed to move 
about the building as he finds necessary for all 
sorts of purposes, such as visiting the library or 
attending classes or getting his luncheon. The 
elementary-school pupil moves about only as a 
member of the class to which he belongs and then 
under strict supervision of the teacher. 

The teaching forces of the two schools are 
likely to be separate, not merely in their duties, 
but in spirit. High-school teachers do not want 
to attend teachers' conventions, and they are 
often proud of the fact that they know nothing 
about the problems of elementary education. 
The high-school teacher is a specialist and he 
cannot be interested in general school matters. 

67 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

The result is that in teaching the specialty to 
which he is devoted the high-school teacher does 
little or nothing to relate his work to that of 
other divisions of either the high school or the 
system in general. 

More fundamental, however, than any other 
cause of separation between the high school and 
■ the elementary school is the radical change in 
! the subject-matter of instruction which the pu- 
pil experiences in passing from the elementary 
school to the high school. The elementary school, 
bound by its traditions, gives nothing but rudi- 
mentary, vernacular instruction. When the pu- 
pil arrives in the high school he is rushed with- 
out delay into a wholly different intellectual 
atmosphere. In the high-school classes the work 
aims to be advanced, and the most commonly 
emphasized subject is foreign language. The 
student finds himself required to begin Latin 
with a teacher who very often knows absolutely 
nothing of the way in which he studied English 
and English grammar. He begins algebra with a 
teacher who sometimes speaks of arithmetic and 
the ignorance of that subject exhibited by every 
68 



AN UNDIVIDED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

member of the class. The student may wonder 
about the true relation between arithmetic and 
algebra and why they are both called mathe- 
matics, but he will have little or no time to in- 
dulge in such speculations. He is dragged rapidly 
through chapter after chapter of this new and 
highly abstract subject, often wondering what it 
is all about and why anybody wants him to study 
it. Even the English which he gets in high school 
seems to bear Httle relation to the long, laborious 
studies which he pursued in the elementary 
classes called reading and grammar. 

Paragraphs on the breach between the elemen- 
tary school and the high school can hardly be 
overwritten. The numerous withdrawals from 
school during the first year of the high school 
bear eloquent testimony to the confusion which 
many a boy and girl experience in trying to take 
advantage of our unitary, continuous education. 

It is difficult to assign with complete justice 
the blame for this situation. Certain it is that 
in the first half of the nineteenth century the 
American academy had gone far toward realizing 
the truly democratic ideal of a continuous school 

69 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

system. It is equally certain that the Latin 
school still represented the tendency toward com- 
plete division which characterized the schools of 
Europe. Finally, into this unsettled situation 
came the German Volksschule, This last influ- 
ence powerfully reenforced the tendency toward 
separation which survived in the organization 
of the Latin school. 

Whatever the sources of the difficulty, the 
main fact is that separation between the elemen- 
tary school and the high school still persists and 
must be removed before we shall have a truly 
democratic system. Our present problem is not 
to spend time settling a matter of historical dis- 
pute. Enough for us to see that there are to-day 
as in the past forces making for and against the 
union of our upper and lower schools. Once the 
problem is clear, our duty is equally plain. We 
must carry forward the program of the American 
academy. The continuity of education which 
that school represented is more in keeping wfth 
our democratic institutions than the exclusive- 
ness of the Latin school or the narrow, limiting 
influences of the Volksschule, 



VI 

PRESSURE WITHIN THE HIGH SCHOOL 

Every period doubtless seems to those who live 
and work in it to be more fruitful of reform than 
any preceding time in the world's history. Per- 
haps we exaggerate the extent and importance 
of the school reforms of the last twenty years, 
but they seem to be broad in scope and profound 
in meaning for the future. Even if there had been 
no war with its accompanying revival of national 
spirit and enthusiasm for democracy, the schools 
of the United States were on the point of achiev- 
ing a new and more highly unified organization. 
With the influence of the war operating to accel- 
erate reform and to sweep away every vestige 
of aristocratic discrimination, the changes of the 
next ten years may be expected to be of the first 
order of importance. 

Let us consider briefly the influences which 
were operating before the war to reform the 
schools of the United States.^ The impressive 
71 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

fact is that there were movements toward change 
in every branch of school organization. The 
elementary-school teachers were conscious that 
their work needed to be carried on differently. 
Especially were they anxious to eliminate from 
the rudimentary courses all artificial and impro- 
ductive sections, and at the same time they were 
eager to bring their pupils at an earlier age into 
contact with the rich, new materials which mod- 
ern science has contributed as guides to indus- 
try and Hfe. The high-school teachers no less than 
the elementary-school teachers were seeing the 
necessity of reform because the cramped space 
of four years allotted to secondary education can 
no longer contain the accumulating courses which 
the high school has to offer. More time and more 
range of opportunity are consequently eagerly 
sought by the high school. Finally, school ad- 
ministrators were becoming aware of the ne- 
cessity of better organization. Scientific tests of 
school work were exhibiting weaknesses in the 
present arrangement which cannot be tolerated 
when brought explicitly to the surface. The 
old-fashioned complacence with schools had 
72 



PRESSURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 

given place to an internal restlessness which 
called loudly for reform. 

It is not necessary in a general discussion of 
this type to expatiate on the growing ambition of 
the elementary school to give a richer course of 
study. Nor will it be appropriate to review the 
many impressive results of tests. The less ob- 
vious and less commonly understood influence of 
the pressure within the high school for more 
time in which to do its work may be selected 
for brief discussion because this pressure has 
operated to determine in no small measure the 
form in which recent reorganization has been 
attempted. 

The high school of 1870 had no serious diffi- 
culty in planning the program of the individual 
student. There were courses in higher mathe- 
matics which had long been traditional; there 
were courses in Latin and Greek which carried 
forward the classical traditions, and, finally, 
there were a few scattered subjects included in 
the curriculum as concessions to the practical 
interests of the students and the half-recognized 
probability that the ordinary student would 

73 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

have very little use for the "solid" courses above 
mentioned. 

From 1870 on, the world moved forward at a 
bewilderingly rapid rate. New sciences grew up 
overnight. The doctrine of biological evolution, 
once started on its career of intellectual conquest, 
was making animal and human Hfe a matter of 
common interest and a subject of scientific treat- 
ment. Industry was evolving new applications 
of physics and chemistry at such a rapid rate that 
the school could not keep up with the pace. As a 
result, the demand for science began to be heard 
from students and patrons. 

Stimulated by the new materials which soon 
crystallized into scientific curricula, the teachers 
of literary subjects found that there were new 
possibilities in their fields. The modern languages 
were offered as the present-day counterparts of 
the classics. To be sure, there was a clear state- 
ment again and again of the belief that the mod- 
ern languages were inferior as subjects of instruc- 
tion and as means of intellectual enlightenment. 
But in spite of this, they came in an increasing 
volume. 

74 



PRESSURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 

With the emphasis on current material came 
the phenomenal growth of English courses. No 
one could object to the study of the vernacular. 
Led by Harvard's example, the colleges, the sci- 
ence teachers, and the classicists all agreed that 
EngKsh must have a place in the high school. 
The result was EngHsh and more EngKsh. No one 
can deny that EngHsh is now in. The problem 
seems to be these days to find room in the tent 
for the other members of the caravan. 

Somewhat late in the scramble for place came 
the historians. They were represented at first 
by the teachers of Greek and Roman history 
who had sheltered themselves under the roof of 
the classical temple. But that seemed in later 
days to be an unsafe shrine, and the historians 
began to build their own more modern edifice. 
To drop the figure and speak in plain modern 
terms, the historians began to ask for a place in 
the sun, but they found the places crowded. 

When we come down to the period of the 

Committee of Ten, or any later date that one 

may choose, we find that there is not enough 

room in the high-school program for those who 

75 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

are there. Yet the company increases. Forging 
and woodwork, sewing and cooking, commercial 
subjects and an endless line of technical courses 
begin to appear. The places which were crowded 
in 1900 began to be at a higher premium in 19 10. 

The crowding of the high-school curriculum 
was temporarily relieved by the adoption of the 
elective system. Foreign observers who saw 
American schools launching on the elective plan 
shook their heads and commented on the in- 
ability of inamature students to choose for them- 
selves. It appeared in practical experience that 
pupils were often confused, while parents some- 
times favored the plan and sometimes objected 
to it. But the plan spread until it has become 
the established practice of our high schools. 
The elective system relieved the congestion for 
a time and students distributed themselves 
throughout the courses, but the various sub- 
jects were so attractive that even the elective 
system failed to reKeve the congestion perma- 
nently. 

The next measure which was adopted grew up 
gradually as a practice rather than as a con- 

76 



PRESSURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 

scious plan. It was the practice of giving stu- 
dents more subjects. Instead of administering 
three or four courses as in the older high schools, 
the new schools let pupils into four, then five, 
and finally six. To be sure, six subjects a day 
seem to be a little distracting when one faces 
the number in cold blood. But the demands of 
modern life are strenuous. It is quite certain, 
too, that the teacher who teaches one of six sub- 
jects to a student each day will have to be con- 
tent with a relatively small fraction of the stu- 
dent's time and energy. But there are a great 
many teachers and they must have students, so 
the students will have to be divided among 
them. 

This is not by any means the whole story. The 
science teachers met after the sciences had been 
admitted into the brotherhood of high-school 
courses and took action stating that no student 
h scientific unless he has at least four consecu- 
tive years of science. The history teachers took 
the same action with regard to history. Latin 
was there ahead of the rest, but in order to make 
its position perfectly clear issued the statement 

77 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

that no one can get real good out of Latin if he 
takes less than four years. English and German 
and French and Spanish followed suit. The re- 
sult of all this passing of resolutions is an impres- 
sion on the lay mind that it is quite hopeless for 
any American boy or girl to expect to get an 
education in a high school. 

The layman's view is of some importance, 
but still more important is the fact that high- 
school teachers finally became aware that they 
had to have more time. Where could they get 
it? 

There is a long story growing out of this com- 
petition of departments. It reaches into the col- 
lege at one end of the high-school course and 
into the elementary school at the other. The 
fact is that what we have tried to work out as a 
high-school curriculum in American schools can- 
not be contained in four years. 

As a practical and preliminary adjustment the 
colleges took up part of the task or, rather, con- - 
tinned to do part of the work of secondary in- 
struction. There never has been a time when 
American colleges have not done a great deal of 

78 



PRESSURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 

secondary work. In recent years this has been 
the more obvious because much of the work of 
freshman and sophomore years has been car- 
ried on without high-school prerequisites. It 
has long been possible in every American col- 
lege for the student to elect first-year French 
and first-year German. He can also begin his- 
tory and science. The question has been asked: 
Why not let a college freshman begin Latin? If 
he wants Greek these days, he usually has to 
postpone the subject to college and often to 
the divinity school. These questions and condi- 
tions grow out of the fact that the present high 
school cannot do all that is required to complete 
a secondary education. 

At the other end of the high-school course, 
the seventh and eighth grades are beginning to 
do some of the work which used to be assigned 
to the ninth and tenth grades. Many an eighth- 
grader these days knows the Merchant of Venice 
better than did the high-school senior of 1890. 
Science has made a lame and halting attempt 
to enter the elementary school, and enough prog- 
ress has been made so that the principle is now 
79 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

well established that science of some kind be- 
longs in the lower school. 

While the internal pressure in the high school 
is thus working toward a breaking-down of the 
high-school bounds, the science of education is 
cooperating powerfully to unsettle the rigid 
organization of the high school. Studies of the 
mental achievements of high-school students 
and of their mental characteristics make it clear 
that the high-school age begins before fourteen. 
The striking facts of growth which mark the 
beginning of adolescence are so easily open to 
observation and record that one of the first great 
studies of the science of education dealt with 
tliis period. The effect of this study of adoles- 
cence was to raise many questions of school 
organization which will not be put aside until 
they are answered by a genuine reorganization 
of the high school. 

It is not the function of this volume to deal 
with the problems of high-school reorganization 
or to follow further the implications of the com- 
ments which have been made on the college 
course. It is important for the present discus- 
80 



PRESSURE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 

sion, however, that we note the fact that rest- 
lessness within the high school dictated the fomi 
in which changes are to-day being made in the 
upper years of the elementary school. 

The institution organized to bridge over the 
gap between elementary school and high school 
has taken on a name which shows that the high 
school is expanding. The new institution is 
called a "junior high school." In this new school 
the forms of organization are patterned after 
those of the high school. Pupils are given re- 
sponsibilities similar to those assigned to high- 
school pupils. The courses are enriched and 
brought over from high-school fields. 

Some antagonism has been aroused by the 
name. Perhaps it would be better to use a less 
specific term which elementary-school teachers 
would regard as appropriate to their work. His- 
torically, there will always be justification for a 
recognition of the fact that the expansion of 
the high school was a determining factor in the 
reorganization of our school system. 

Whatever the antagonism to the name "jun- 
ior high school," the institution is here as one 
8i 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

of the most promising solutions of the problem 
of democratizing our school system. We must 
try to understand it and make use of it for the 
purpose for which it originated, namely, to cure 
the breach between elementary schools and high 
schools. 



VII 

WHAT IS A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL? 

If one visits ten junior high schools and tries to 
generalize on what one has seen, it will be found 
difficult to make any statements which apply 
equally to all of these institutions. 

All of them are, indeed, recent in their origin. 
The movement is about a decade old. It has 
spread rapidly in recent years, so that it is prob- 
able that out of ten samples five will be not 
more than two or three years old. 

Most junior high schools have adopted a de- 
partmentalized form of class organization. This 
type of organization in which teachers specialize 
in one subject, or in a very limited group of sub- 
jects, while the pupils pass during the day from 
teacher to teacher for the full series of their 
studies was by no means uncommon in elemen- 
tary grades before the junior high school ap- 
peared. Departmentalization is, however, so 
characteristic of all ordinary high-school courses 

83 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

that the application of the name "junior high 
school" to any seventh or eighth grade having 
this organization is very natural. 

Beyond the common characteristics of ex- 
treme youth and departmentalization there are 
likely to be few points of complete agreement 
among junior high schools. Some of these in- 
stitutions include the seventh, eighth, and ninth 
grades. Some include two and some only one of 
these grades. 

Sometimes the junior high school is housed 
with the elementary school. Sometimes, though 
less frequently, it has a building of its own, and 
sometimes it is in the high-school building. 

In teaching staff, the junior high school usu- 
ally aims to have more highly trained teachers 
than do the seventh and eighth grades. But 
this theory is often overlooked in practical or- 
ganization and teachers from the grades are in 
charge as they would be if there were no junior 
high school. Indeed, in some cases the junior 
high school has furnished the excuse for putting 
teachers of inferior academic training in charge 
of the ninth grade. 

84 



WHAT IS A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL? 

Whatever diversities appear in other mat- 
ters, they are completely eclipsed by the varia- 
tions in courses of study. In one type of junior 
high school there is no departure whatsoever 
from the courses of study which preceded the 
re-christening. At the other extreme is the jun- 
ior high school which carried down into the 
seventh grade high-school algebra and high- 
school Latin. In one case observed by the writer 
this was attempted without any modification of 
the courses to adapt them to the seventh grade. 
Even the textbooks were those used in high- 
school classes. 

A common form of reorganization of the cur- 
riculum which some writers have taken as 
characteristic of the movement is found in 
junior high schools which differ from elemen- 
tary schools only in the fact that they teach a 
great deal of handwork. This handwork in some 
institutions takes the form of industrial courses. 

It should be remarked in passing that it is 

a fundamental mistake to identify industrial 

classes in the seventh and eighth grades with the 

junior-high-school movement in general. It is 

85 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

true that this is the form in which the junior 
high school appears in some systems, but it is 
not the only form, nor is it the characteristic 
form. 

Between the extreme forms of curriculum 
which have been mentioned there is every vari- 
ety of intermediate form. There is the school 
which offers as an extra an opportunity for the 
pupils to begin a foreign language. Back of this 
offering is the assumption that the child is going 
on into a senior high school and will be carried 
over more readily into the new high-school 
courses through this preliminary training. 

Sometimes the elective foreign language is 
offered not as an extra but as a substitute for 
English grammar, it being held that English 
grammar will be best taught through the medium 
of the new grammatical structures to which the 
child will be introduced in this elective study. 

Another intermediate form of reorganization 
of the curriculum is exhibited in some institu- 
tions which offer, not a full technical curricu- 
lum, but elective courses in a few of the manual 
arts. In earlier times this would have been de- 
86 



WHAT IS A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL? 

scribed as an extension of the elementary curric- 
ulum, not as a serious change in the spirit of the 
school. But the name "junior high school" 
has become popular, and many school systems 
have felt that they must have the name even 
on the slight justification of a new course in 
woodworking or cooking. 

Science has in some cases been the new ele- 
ment which has differentiated the junior high 
school from its predecessor. Again, it has been 
commercial courses, or some very elementary 
form of training for office work such as business 
penmanship or bookkeeping. 

The mathematics courses of the junior high 
school differ most commonly from the conven- 
tional seventh- and eighth-grade arithmetic in 
the addition of some of the methods of rapid 
calculation common to so-called "business arith- 
metic." 

Such in brief summary is the variety which 
one is likely to find when one visits various 
junior high schools. Some observers have come 
back from a tour of this kind full of cynicism and 
pessimism about the movement. It is a sham 

87 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

imitation, they tell us, an effort to do in a cheap 
way in the upper elementary grades what the 
high school should be left to do. 

To one who has sympathy with the positions 
which have been developed in earHer chapters of 
this volume the apparent chaos of the junior- 
high-school movement will be neither a sur- 
prise nor a source of discouragement. The 
junior high school has grown up in democratic 
America as the last chapter in the history of the 
struggle against the medieval dual system. The 
junior high school is the device which modern 
society has developed in its effort to throw off 
the limitations of an artificial„eight-j:e.ar^_xudL' 
mentary, vernacular school. The junior high 
school is a device to heal the breach between 
the elementary school and the high school. Of 
course, the junior high school must be in its 
early days full of crudities and variations. There 
will be those who misuse the name and fail to 
express the spirit of the movement. But if the- 
choice between continuation of the old system 
and experimentation mixed with some crudities 
is presented to an intelligent society, there can 
88 



WHAT IS A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL? 

be very little doubt what the decision will be. 
What is needed is not a suppression of the move- 
ment but a wise guidance of its progress. 

Defense of the junior high school need not 
delay us long in the light of what has been said 
in earlier chapters. It is important, however, 
that an appeal be made to principals of ele- 
mentary schools, teachers of seventh and eighth 
grades and school superintendents, that they 
think of the movement from the point of view 
of the school system as a whole and recognize 
it, not merely as an expansion downward of the 
high school, but also and chiefly as a necessary 
evolution of the elementary school. 

The elementary school no less than the high 
school has been forced by its own internal de- 
velopment to change its content of instruction 
and its methods. The extension of the school 
year, to which reference was made in an earher 
chapter, of necessity compelled the expansion 
of the course of study. The better equipment 
of schools has tended in the same direction. So 
has the improved training of teachers. 

The better-trained teachers have observed 

89 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

that pupils of twelve years of age can be given 
responsibilities of a type impossible in the lower 
grades. As a result there is a very different so- 
cial atmosphere in the upper grades than there 
used to be when discipline was of an arbitrary 
type. Formerly, the assumption was that chil- 
dren must be suppressed; now, that they must 
be drawn out. Especially is it true of children 
in the upper grades of the elementary school 
that their interests should be satisfied and their 
natural ambitions to become a part of adult 
society fostered. This change in social spirit is 
sure to be followed by a change in intellectual 
atmosphere. 

Principals of elementary schools are usually 
reluctant to lose their seventh and eighth 
grades because they consider them helpful in 
maintaining the discipHne and intellectual at- 
mosphere of the school. The plea is accordingly 
made that the changes in the course of study be 
made without disturbing the organization of the 
grades. 

In answer to this plea it should be pointed out 
so emphatically that there will be no possibility 
90 



WHAT IS A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL? 

of the conclusion being forgotten that the junior- 
high-school movement is based on exactly the 
considerations which lead the elementary-school 
principal to want to retain his upper grades. It 
is because seventh- and eighth-grade pupils are 
able to take responsibiUties and because they are 
eager to know more of the world, that larger 
opportunities and opportunities of a higher type 
should be offered to them. 

The argument must, however, be pushed much 
further. The enrichment of the upper grades will 
serve society most effectively if it is recognized 
that along with enrichment of the program there 
must be recognition of individual differences in 
pupils. At twelve years of age and after, the child 
begins to look forward to the demands of his 
adult life. It is not necessary to plunge him at 
once into a trade when he is twelve, but it is 
important that his individual tastes and capaci- 
ties begin to be given play. This means flexibil- 
ity in the school organization. This means in 
turn the gathering together of enough eighth 
grades and seventh grades to justify variety and 
richness in the course. If a school system is 

91 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

large enough to bring into one building one 
hundred and twenty eighth -graders, the variety 
of work which can be offered is obviously greater 
than the variety which can be offered to six sep- 
arate grades of twenty each scattered about in 
the elementary schools of the city. 

The elementary-school principal who objects 
to losing his eighth grade can be encouraged to 
derive no small consolation from the wholly un- 
solved problem to be worked out by some intel- 
ligent school man in discovering the kind of 
material of instruction most appropriate to the 
intermediate grades. Problems of the sixth, fifth, 
and fourth grades have been too much neglected 
because principals have been absorbed in the 
primary grades and higher grades. 

The appeal which the junior high school should 
make to those in charge of the upper grades and 
those who are to take over these grades in the 
new organization is no mere personal appeal. 
Up to this time the upper grades have been 
handicapped by the traditions of the borrowing 
of 1840. These traditions must be thrown off 
and in their place must come a course of study 
92 



WHAT IS A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL? 

worked out experimentally and checked by sci- 
entific tests. Let all who have launched this 
movement in any one of its manifold forms turn 
now to a careful impersonal evaluation of their 
achievements. Is Latin successful? Is manual 
training successful? What characteristics of 
junior-high-school pupils need to be recognized 
in constructing the course of study? We have 
thrown away Old- World traditions; do not let 
us substitute for the older organization mere 
individual guesses and controversies about 
names. Let us go about this new and demo- 
cratic task in a thoroughly scientific way. 

There can hardly be any doubt that the fol- 
lowing general principles will guide the further 
evolution of our school system: — 

The day is past when the eight-year curricu- 
limi can continue to be made up of vernacular, 
rudimentary courses. 

The elementary curriculum is in process of 
enrichment, and at the same time that it is en- 
larged it must be freed from artificial and useless 
material which tradition has kept in the school. 

Absolute continuity of educational opportu- 
93 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

nity must be provided. The breaks which have 
been brought over from antiquated systems of 
education must be closed up. 

The adoption of these principles assures far- 
reaching reforms. There need be no pessimism 
if the reforms follow various lines in different 
places provided we keep the situation sufficiently 
.flexible to permit constant readjustment to meet 
ever-growing needs, and provided we select by 
'carefully directed scientific tests the sound re- 
sults of our experimentation and make these the 
foundations of all future organization. 



VIII 

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND ECONOMY 

Two urgent considerations have come vividly to 
attention in recent years, both pushing us toward 
the type of reorganization of schools found in the 
junior high school. The first of these is the scien- 
tific principle of individual differences; the sec- 
ond is the practical demand for economy. 

All the recent studies of school children re- 
veal the existence of mental and physical dif- 
ferences so great that they must be taken into 
account in arranging any educational program. 
For example, pupils in the second grade show 
striking differences in their ability to read. One 
reads at a rate of eight words a minute while an- 
other reads at the rate of more than a hundred 
words in the same period. The degree of compre- 
hension differs in even wider ranges, reaching 
from zero to ninety per cent for material of mod- 
erate difficulty. In arithmetic differences appear 
in the early grades not only in degree but in kind. 

95 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

One child multiplies well but does not add well. 
Another shows just the reverse. Like facts turn 
up in every field of study. 

The individual differences which appear in the 
early grades accumulate as the pupils pass 
through year after year. It makes no difference 
how rigidly the courses are prescribed; there will 
be individual picking and choosing from the in- 
tellectual opportunities offered until finally in- 
dividual differences begin to make themselves 
felt as matters of importance which cannot be 
ignored. 

There was a time when it would have been 
said that these differences must be overcome. 
That was the period when the concept of equal- 
ity was interpreted as involving little more than 
the idea of uniformity. Because men and chil- 
dren are equal it was believed that they must be 
treated exactly alike. There is much in our school 
program to-day that seems to be based on the 
philosophy of uniformity. 

In the broader developments of modern social 
theory outside of the school the principle of 
individual differences is being more and more 

96 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

widely recognized. Industrial society is made up 
of specialists. Each specialist is dependent on 
those about him, but finds his personal task con- 
genial because he recognizes the dependence as 
mutual. 

This broad social principle is of cardinal im- 
portance in school organization. Sooner or later 
specialization by the pupil must be recognized 
as legitimate in the regular work of the school. 

The junior high school comes at a period in the 
child's development when individual differences 
are becoming sufficiently pronounced to demand 
attention. The primary child, meeting all the 
intellectual experiences to which the school intro- 
duces him, is submerged by the overwhelming 
body of new opportunities. There are individual 
differences in the primary grades, but they re- 
quire for the most part no separate organizations 
because the general work of the primary grades 
is broad enough for all. The children of the 
fourth, fifth, and sixth grades need more indi- 
vidual attention and in the progressive schools 
are receiving it. Here, however, as in the lower 
grades, the general organization offers variety 

97 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

enough to include the different tastes and capaci- 
ties without being disrupted. It is only in abnor- 
mal cases that organization has to be differenti- 
ated in the first six grades. 

By the time the pupils reach the end of the 
sixth year they are so divergent in their attain- 
ments and in their outlooks that the organiza- 
tion of the school must reflect this diversity. 
There must be different paths for the pupils to 
follow. 

This statement has been attacked as undemo- 
cratic — as though democracy called for contin- 
uous uniformity of treatment of all its mem- 
bers. To this criticism there are two answers. 
First, individual differences are so marked in the 
seventh grade that if they are not provided for 
inside the school, pupils will leave the school. 
Indeed, pupils are to-day leaving the schools 
which hold to the old formal curriculum just be- 
cause they find in industry and in other spheres 
concessions to their individual needs. Whether 
we like it or not, education will follow diversified 
lines from the sixth grade on. How much more 
rational it will be to adopt a general form of 

98 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

school organization which recognizes individual 
differences and utilizes them. 

The second answer is that the plea for instruc- 
tion in the common elements of democracy can 
be justly realized only when common elements 
are treated as part of the program, not as the 
whole program. There should be common ele- 
ments in the programs of different pupils, but 
there should also be elective opportunities. Mod- 
ern society needs many kinds of workers. Intel- 
ligent direction of workers into different fields is 
a social necessity. The seventh grade is the time 
when the broader views of Hfe begin to open up 
before the child. It is time that these views be 
given all the breadth that training can contribute. 

Even while the two answers just offered to the 
plea for uniformity are partially accepted it is 
sometimes urged that the period of differentia- 
tion of education be postponed. It is said that 
the high school is the period for such differ- 
entiation. To such demands for postponement 
the answer of experience must be made. The 
fact is that the great majority of pupils do not 
postpone the beginnings of specialization of in- 
99 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

terests to the high-school period. They some- 
times drift blindly because we try to prevent 
them from seeing whither they are going. Their 
natures are different. Their attainments are 
different. Their ambitions are different. They 
need to see the world in a broad way so that they 
may take paths that are different. Our educa- 
tional system must recognize these facts. 

Reverting to our historical survey, it is in 
point to call attention once more to the fact that 
the Volksschule which led us to set up an undiffer- 
entiated eight-year elementary school was fixed 
in its ways because it was an institution designed 
to produce uniformity of a lower grade. There 
was and is to-day in the German system differen- 
tiation of a very marked type, and it comes long 
before the end of the eighth school year. From 
the day school begins the common boy is marked 
off from the boy going into the higher walks of 
life. Our American system repudiates the social 
doctrine which separates the common people 
from an hereditary aristocracy. Because we want 
American pupils to have more of a common view 
of life than the German schools as a whole sup- 

lOO 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

ply, is there any reason why we should be bound 
by the limiting traditions which keep all the com- 
mon people of the German eight-year school 
huddled together in a rigid, meager course? 

The junior high school comes with its differ- 
entiated opportunities. It offers to pupils the 
institutional recognition of their individual differ- 
ences. Its courses of study contain some common 
elements which will make for a uniform view of 
democratic responsibilities. At the same time 
the courses open to one pupil one path; to an- 
other, another path. 

Another great virtue of the junior high school 
is that it puts a stop to the waste of time and 
energy which has resulted from the inadequate 
organization of our schools. Waste has come 
from three causes. ^.First, pupils have been held 
back in the upper grades in order to conform 
to the tradition that elementary education is 
vernacular and rudimentary. Second, pupils 
have been confused because of the great change 
experienced in passing from elementary classes 
to high-school classes. Third, many pupils have 
dropped out of school or failed to work with 

lOI 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

enthusiasm because the subjects offered to them 
were artificial and unsuited to their needs. 

The wastes of our educational system have 
been accepted with complacence year after year. 
In the first place, we have been a people living 
in a rich land where our social inefficiencies have 
been more than covered up by our material re- 
sources. In the second place, we have been 
utterly unscientific and uncritical in the develop- 
ment of our institutions. We have been a fron- 
tier people absorbed in practical adjustments, 
willing to put up with mistakes, even serious 
mistakes, if only individual freedom is not cut 
off entirely. 

There have been voices warning us that we 
cannot afford to go on with our prodigal waste. 
Twenty or more years ago EHot called atten- 
tion to the fact that our pupils are behind those 
trained in the better European schools. In more 
recent years our professional schools have be- 
come disturbed about this deficiency. Our mer- 
chants and manufacturers, made aware of our 
deficiencies by the competition they have met 
in the world's markets, have been demanding 

I02 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

the substitution of vocational training for waste- 
ful general courses. 

The demand for economy has become acute 
in many school systems, often expressing itself 
in crude terms. Taxpayers have said that they 
are paying too high a price for an inferior grade 
of education. Inquiries have been set on foot to 
discover whether money could be saved or else 
the schools improved. Experience would seem 
to justify the statement that communities and 
individuals are anxious to avoid waste but 
are not parsimonious in their attitude toward 
schools. They seem to demand effective expen- 
ditures and not curtailment of schools. 

The junior high school comes as one answer 
to this demand for economy. This institution is 
offered as a better school not as a cheaper school. 
In point of actual cost the junior high school is 
usually more expensive than the seventh, eighth, 
and ninth grades because it offers a richer course 
of study and especially because it keeps children 
in school. But in its economy of human beings, 
the junior high school is far in advance of the 
old-fashioned elementary school. 
103 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Furthermore, it is an economical school in that 
it brings its pupils to advanced stages of their 
training at an earlier date. The boy who is going 
into commerce can here study the subjects which 
will fit him for his career earlier than he could in 
any other organization of the curriculum. The boy 
who is going into a profession gets an earHer start. 

There are some parents who are so enamored 
of the school which trained them that they are 
afraid of the new school which carries boys and 
girls along faster than pupils used to be carried 
through the elementary school. Such parents go 
back in imagination to the golden age of their 
childhood and fabricate notions about the excel- 
lence of those earHer schools which have no basis 
in fact. Tests have been possible through the 
repetition of examinations given a generation 
ago; the results of these tests show that the 
schools of to-day are superior to those of earlier 
times. Similar tests of pupils who have not been 
held back by an antiquated and wasteful pro- 
gram show that the junior high school when 
organized to give enriched opportunities is in 
most cases a superior school. 
104 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

On the part of colleges there is likely to be a 
lack of disposition to recognize the economies 
of the junior-high-school organization. The col- 
leges have been accustomed to think of a high 
school as a four-year institution. The college 
faculty usually knows that back of the high 
school there is an elementary school, but a com- 
mon boast among the members of this body is 
that they know nothing about the lower schools. 
If it is proposed that the lower schools be rec- 
ognized as in any way preparing for college, 
faculties are likely to refuse to take part in the 
discussion. Academic myopia will prevent their 
seeing so far. 

To be sure, there are a number of high-school 
principals who are extracting from the colleges 
unconscious tribute for the junior high school. 
Even to-day these principals are reporting to 
the colleges as high-school credits courses taken 
in what used to be the eighth grade. Some day 
colleges will find this out and then some will 
accept the new thing while others will hold out 
for a time for what is called the high standard 
of scholarly work. 

105 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Probably the professional schools will see the 
economy of the junior high school before the 
colleges do. Perhaps the economy of the new 
organization will be compelled to express itself 
for a few years in plain terms such as the elimi- 
nation of the eighth grade. In any case, there 
will doubtless come a time when the richer 
opportunity and the better articulation of the 
lower school with the higher will bring economy 
to the attention even of the most conservative. 

There is a somewhat analogous problem of 
economy at the other end of the high school. 
There is at that point the so-called junior col- 
lege. When the two intermediate or junior or- 
ganizations have been assimilated into the 
American educational system there is likely to 
be a general awakening to the fact that economy 
in education can best be effected by eliminating 
some of the existing obstructionist institutions. 
That, however, is another story, the introduc- 
tion to which is appropriate here only because 
it helps to make vivid the impression that prob- 
lems of economy are in the air. 

Without the goal of educational economy in 
1 06 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

mind the junior high school will fail of one of 
its largest contributions. It is perhaps the chief 
evil of the present chaotic experimentation with 
the junior high school that the need for economy 
is not fully recognized. As soon as the idea that 
there must be economy is accepted, the reform 
of the curriculum will go forward more rapidly 
and with clearer conscious motives. 

Economy of the true type will be realized 
only when reform goes deeper than external 
organization and produces changes in the de- 
tails of the individual courses. The task before 
the junior high school is at once a task in the 
large and a task in the minute. To the adminis- 
trator and the student of public affairs the junior 
high school is an institution. To the teacher it 
is a series of courses, all of which must be worked 
over in detail. 



IX 

PRACTICAL METHODS OF PROMOTING 
REFORM 

There is no problem more difficult of solution 
by a democratic community than the problem 
of putting through a reform. Powerful indi- 
viduals can work reforms by the exercise of au- 
thority or influence because the goal of the pro- 
posed reform is clearly seen and the means of 
reform are energetically used. The fact is that 
in most cases democratic society depends on 
strong individuals to initiate and carry out re- 
forms. 

How much reforms depend on individuals 
is not always realized because the immediate 
instrument of educational reform is often a text- 
book rather than an explicit declaration of pur- 
pose to make a change in the course of study. 
Again and again in the history of American 
schools sweeping reforms have been effected by 
writers of textbooks. Conversely, a book once 
io8 



PROMOTING REFORM 

established in the schools is the strongest pos- 
sible stronghold of conservatism. A successful 
book will sometimes keep back reform for a 
generation. 

The influence of textbooks is especially strong 
in American schools for reasons discussed in an 
earlier chapter. While European teachers give 
instruction by word of mouth, our schools have 
developed textbooks to a degree which is as- 
tonishing. Our schools always have been and 
are to-day reading schools, dependent for their 
operations on textbooks. 

With all its influence, the textbook has never 
been even remotely democratized. Indeed, it 
is only very recently, and in the clumsiest sort 
of fashion, that the textbook has been made a 
matter of public concern. Recently California 
and Kansas have undertaken to publish their 
textbooks through State agencies. Many other 
States and local systems have set up plans of 
public adoption of books. But even where print- 
ing and adoption are public, authorship is indi- 
vidual and the machinery of adoption creaks, 
to say the least. 

109 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Not only is authorship left to the individual, 
but the production and distribution of the text- 
book are left by a public-school system to pri- 
vate commercial enterprise. This is another ex- 
ample justifying the statement with which this 
chapter began, that democratic society usually 
leaves its reforms to individuals. 

Perhaps it is overbold to hope that it can be 
otherwise. Certainly the individuals who write 
American books and the publishers who print 
and publish them are rendering a service of 
high quality to the country. The influence of 
the books used in our schools is for the most part 
justified by the material supplied to the schools. 

When one has a special reform in mind one 
can hardly fail to think carefully of the effect 
of the textbook on this reform. In considering 
the junior high school, accordingly, we may 
very properly ask, What is to be said of the 
books? 

The answer to be made to this question is that 

junior-high-school books are few and for the 

most part of very little help to the movement. 

The junior high school has been conceived by 

no 



PROMOTING REFORM 

some to be an institution requiring an abridged 
high-school book; by others, as an institution 
requiring a somewhat larger collection of books 
of exactly the same type as has been used up 
to this time in the upper grades. The fact is 
that the junior high school needs a new type of 
book. 

It is not difficult to imagine a scheme whereby 
a new kind of textbooks could be prepared in 
truly democratic fashion. Perhaps it will not be 
a vain task to outline the scheme. 

Suppose that a number of school systems 
could be induced to interest themselves in 
creating a new series of books. These systems 
are now willing to pay teachers of high ability 
to teach forty pupils. They are willing to pay 
teachers to make out reports. Let us assume 
that twenty systems could be found in the coun- 
try which would be willing to pay teachers for 
working out the details of courses of study, or at 
least to relieve them of part of their other work 
in order that they might devote energy to the 
task of making textbooks. 

Let us assume further that in the twenty 
III 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

systems there are three teachers especially in- 
terested in mathematics, three others inter- 
ested in history, and so on through the list. Let 
these specialists put their methods and experi- 
ence into the form of a preliminary statement 
of a course to be used. Note that the specialists 
are not to be asked to talk about the course. 
They are to put down the actual text material. 

The next step will be, not an offhand criti- 
cism of the material, but a serious trial of the 
material by the twenty cooperating systems. 
If democracy cannot collaborate the original 
text, there is no reason why it should not be 
trained to serious and constructive criticism. 
There is plenty of such criticism of textbooks 
which is lost to-day because we have absolutely 
no machinery for collecting it. Under the pro- 
posed scheme, teachers will be given time for 
criticizing the text as well as for using it. 

At the same time, our twenty cooperating 
schools will use tests to see how much the pupils 
who are studying the trial texts really get out of 
them. Again, we have plenty of tests in schools 
to-day, but we have no machinery for sending 

112 



PROMOTING REFORM 

back the results of these tests to the makers 
of textbooks. Our cooperating schools will be 
concerned with the testing of their courses of 
study from a new point of view. 

It will take time to carry on this testing and 
to bring together the results. Perhaps some 
State Department will see the wisdom of doing 
the work. Perhaps it will be taken up by a 
National Bureau. We have such a bureau now 
to standardize cotton and wheat. We have a 
National Bureau that collects detailed informa- 
tion from the fields where strawberries and can- 
taloupes are produced. Perhaps it will be thought 
worth while some day for a democracy to make a 
course of study for its schools. 

After the criticism is in, the preliminary state- 
ment will be made over into a book. The book 
will then be kept in process of periodic revision 
so that it will never block progress. 

The plan is doubtless not so simple as it 
sounds. It has the advantage over the present 
plan of textbook-making that it throws the re- 
sponsibility of this work where it belongs, namely, 
on the shoulders of the school as an institution. 

113 



A DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 

Besides improving textbooks such a scheme 
would lead to a study of reforms as no mere 
adoption of textbooks ever can. If the schools 
could be made self -reforming, we might look for- 
ward to the supreme achievement of democracy 
— a school system in which the teachers and 
the courses of study, as well as the pupils, are 
in constant process of adaptation to the growing 
needs of community life. 



OUTLINE 

I. INTRODUCTION 

1. Education began as an aristocratic privilege 

for boys only i 

2. Democratic theory and aristocratic practice 
among the Puritans 2 

3. Aristocratic traditions in the early national 
period 2 

4. The democratic academy 3 

5. The borrowing of the Prussian common school 3 

6. Experiments in democratization .... 3 
7^ The influence of the war 4 

II. UNDEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS 

1. Universal education n9t necessarily democratic 6 

2. The compartment system of Germany . . 7 

3. Two systems of training teachers .... 8 

4. Our normal schools modeled on the German 
Lehrerseminar 9 

5. The spirit of education in the Volksschule . 10 

6. The spirit of education in the Gymnasium . .12 

7. The German school system is the logical sequel 

of the first educational system of Europe . .16 

III. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN 
SYSTEM 

1. New England started with a dual system of 
schools 19 

2. Social forces pre vented two parallel sets of schools 24 

IIS 



OUTLINE 

3. A cleavage between upper and lower schools 
tended to persist 26 

4. Three facts partially counteracting undemo- 
cratic cleavage 26 

a. The right to read the truth for one's 
self 27 

h. The local management and control of 
schools . . . 29 

c. The lack of vocational specialization in 
the lower schools 32 

IV. UNFORTUNATE BORROWING 

1. Natural evolution of American schools checked 

by the borrowing of European patterns . .38 

2. Chaotic organization by local managements 
opened the way 39 

3. Prussian common school system borrowed as 
most efficient organization . . . . .45 

4. The negative qualities of the Volksschule . . 49 

5. The immediate effects not serious ... 50 

6. Two subsequent evil effects 51 

a. Expanding the rudiments . . . .51 

b. Delaying advanced instruction . . .52 

7. Radical reform should begin in the upper grades 

of the elementary school 54 

V. THE STRUGGLE FOR AN UNDIVIDED 
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

I. Experimentation has saved us from the com- 
plete domination of the Volksschule ... 56 

116 



OUTLINE 

2. The intimate influence of the American higher 
schools 58 

a. Academies 58 

b. High schools 60 

3. A single continuous school system evolved . 63 

4. Something of a break persists between the ele- 
mentary school and the high school ... 66 

VI. PRESSURE WITHIN THE HIGH SCHOOL 

1. Influences making for reform prior to the war . 71 

2. Special pressures and responses within the high 
school 72 

a. The rapid expansion of the curriculum . 73 

b. The elective system as a mode of relief . 76 

c. Increasing the number of studies as a 
further relief ^ 77 

3. The colleges take over portions of secondary 
instruction 78 

4. The seventh and eighth grades assume part of 
the task 79 

5. The junior high school devised to bridge the 
gap between elementary and secondary schools 81 

VII. WHAT IS A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 

I. Two common characteristics of junior high 
schools 83 

a. Departmentalized form of class organiza- 
tion , 2>^ 

b. The students are of age between elemen- 
tary and high school students ... 84 

117 



OUTLINE 

2. Extreme variations of practice in junior high 
schools 84 

a. Years of instruction included ... 84 

b. Housing 84 

c. Teaching staff 84 

d. Courses of study 85 

3. Variations and crudities inevitable in an experi- 
mental period 88 

4. Scientific guidance not suppression required . 93 

5. General principles guiding the evolution of the 
school system 93 

VIII. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND ECONOMY 

1. Two urgent considerations favoring reorganiza- 
tion of junior high school type .... 95 

a. Scientific principle of individual differ- 
ences .95 

b. Practical demand for economy . . 95, loi 

2. The junior high school provides for individual 
differences 97 

a. Individual differences accumulate to the 
point of requiring recognition . . .98 

b. Social life calls for specialization ... 98 

3. There is nothing essentially undemocratic in 
this provision for individual differences . . 98 

a. Failure to adjust to individual variations - 
/ forces children out of school .... 98 

b. Instruction in common elements of de- 
mocracy better realized as part of pro- 
gram . . . .101 

118 



OUTLINE 

4. The junior high school stops current waste of 
time and energy loi 

a. Three sources of waste loi 

b. Two reasons for our complacent accept- 
ance of waste 102 

5. The acute demand for educational economy- 
voices itself crudely 103 

6. The economies of the junior high school . . 103 

a. Keeps children in school . . . .103 

b. Brings pupils to advanced study earlier . 104 

IX. PRACTICAL METHODS OF PROMOTING 
REFORM 

1. Democracies depend on strong individuals to 
effect reform 108 

2. The large influence of the textbook in American 
schools 109 

3. The inadequacy of junior high school textbooks no 

4. A democratic method of preparing texts . .111 



RIVERSIDE EDUCATIONAL MONOGRAPHS 

Edite d by HENRY SUZZ ALLO 

Andress's The Teaching of Hygiene in the Grades $ .75 
Atwood's The Theory and Practice of the ElindergaTten .75 
Bailey's Art Education ,75 
Betts's New Ideals in Rural Schools .75 
Betts's The Recitation .75 
Bloomfield's Vocational Guidance of Youth .73 
Cabot's Volunteer Help to the Schools ,73 
Campagnac's The Teaching of Composition .40 
Cole's Industrial Education in Elementary Schools .40 
Cooley's Language Teaching in the Grades .40 
Cubberley's Changing Conceptions of Education .40 
Cubberley's The Improvement of Rural Schools .40 
Dewey's Interest and Effort in Education ,7S 
Dewey's Moral Principles in Education .40 
Dooley's The Education of the Ne'er-Do- Well .75 
Earhart's Teaching Children to Study .73 
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Eliot's Concrete and Practical in Modem Education .40 
Emerson's Education .40 
Evans's The Teaching of High School Mathematics .40 
Fairchild's The Teaching of Poetry in the High School .75 
Fiske's The Meaning of Infancy .40 
Freeman's The Teaching of Handwriting .75 
Haliburton and Smith's Teaching Poetry in the Grades .75 
Hartwell's The Teaching of History .40 
Haynes's Economics in the Secondary School .73 
Hill's The Teaching of Civics .73 
Home's The Teacher as Artist .40 
Hyde's The Teacher's Philosophy .40 
Jenkins's Reading in the Primary Grades .75 
Kendall and Stryker's History in the Elementary Grades .75 
Kilpatrick's The Montessori System Examined .40 
Leonard's English Composition as a Social Problem .73 
Lewis's Democracy's High School .73 
Maxwell's The Observation of Teaching .75 
Meredith's The Educational Bearings of Modern Psy- 
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Palmer's Ethical and Moral Instruction in the Schools .40 
Palmer's Self-Cultivation in English .40 
Palmer's The Ideal Teacher .40 
Palmer's Trades and Professions .40 
Perry's Status of the Teacher .40 
Prosser's The Teacher and Old Age .73 
Russell's Economy in Secondary Education .40 
Smith's Establishing Industrial Schools .75 
Snedden's The Problem of Vocational Education .40 
Suzzallo's The Teaching of Primary Arithmetic .73 
SuMallo's The Teaching of Spelling .73 
Swift's Speech Defects in School Children .73 
Terman's The Teacher's Health .73 
Thomdike's Individuality .40 
Trowbridpe's The Home School .73 
Weeks's The People's School .73 
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